Larijani: US took Daesh terrorists to Afghanistan
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said the United States has transferred a large number of Daesh terrorists to Afghanistan over the past years.
Speaking in Tehran on Thursday, Larijani said this could bring about a replay elsewhere in Asia, as was suffered by Iraq and Syria during the Takfiri terror group’s three-year reign in the Arab countries, Press TV reported.
Cooperation among Iran, China, Pakistan, Turkey, Russia, and Afghanistan would be of “great significance,” he told Chen Zu, the visiting vicechairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese National People’s Congress.
The remarks echoed similar ones in January by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
The Chinese official traveled to Tehran for an upcoming twoday conference on terrorism to be attended by top parliamentarians from Iran, China, Pakistan, Turkey, Russia, and Afghanistan. The event is the second of its type, the previous one being hosted by Pakistan last year.
He said Tehran and Beijing had enjoyed “good counterterrorism cooperation” in recent years.
Daesh attacked Iraq and Syria in 2014, overrunning huge swathes of territory with the avowed intention of using the countries to expand its turf.
The US enlisted scores of its allies in a self-styled battle to push against the group, but the coalition was remarkably slow in progress despite its sheer size.
Baghdad and Damascus enlisted the assistance of their allies, including the Islamic Republic, as the outfit was threatening to realize its ambitions. They finally imposed defeat on the terrorists late last year.
Daesh established a comparably limited presence in Afghanistan, where it has mostly run rampant in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
On February 5, three months after the group’s defeat in Iraq and Syria, the Associated Press reported that the US military was pulling its forces from a base in Iraq and shifting them to Afghanistan.
The report flew in the face of President Donald Trump’s election campaign promises to end Washington’s Afghanistan intervention. A US attempt to get the United Nations to condemn Hamas, the Palestinian group administering the besieged Gaza Strip, failed on Thursday.
The resolution required two-thirds support and while Assembly resolutions are non-binding, they can carry political weight. The US text received 87 votes in favor, 58 against, 32 abstentions and 16 countries did not vote, Reuters reported.
In an earlier procedural move requested by Kuwait, the 193-member body narrowly voted to require twothirds support and not a simple majority for adoption of the draft resolution.
Outgoing US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley had written to member states on Monday to urge them to vote for the Usdrafted text, warning them: “The United States takes the outcome of this vote very seriously.”
The United States is working on a long-awaited plan to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but the Palestinians are skeptical and have accused the Trump administration of siding with Israel on core issues.
Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said that “rejecting the American drafted resolution against the resistance represents a blow to the American administration and reaffirms the legitimacy of the resistance.”
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said the countries that rejected the draft resolution should be ashamed.
For more than a decade Gaza has been controlled by Hamas. The economy has collapsed, creating what the World Bank describes as a humanitarian crisis with shortages of water, electricity and medicine under Israeli blockage.
Iran’s Deputy UN Ambassador Es’haq Al-e Habib accused the United States of trying to deflect the attention of the world from the root causes of the conflict and said “we recognize Hamas as a legitimate resistance movement fighting for the liberation of Palestinian territory from foreign occupation.”
Iran described the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as the root of all existing conflicts and crises in the Middle East region, Press TV reported.
The proposed resolution, he said in a statement addressed to the UN on Thursday, “indicates the real nature of the US foreign policy concerning the Palestinians, which is essentially based on deceit, complete ignorance of
Palestinians’ rights, and also unconditioned and invariable support for Israel.”
“The draft resolution is predicated on deception since it totally ignores the root of the conflict, namely the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel over the past decades.”
Al-e Habib said it never mattered in the same proisrael US foreign policy what crimes would be perpetrated against the Palestinians, how many Palestinian children would be killed, or what brutality and inhumane treatment would they be subjected to the Palestinians.
Al-e Habib said Israel’s settlement activities showed that “it has never had any intention for or interest in peace with the Palestinians”. He also criticized the regime’s “unprecedented” measures aimed at speeding up Judaization of Al-quds. Efforts, that he said, included changing the holy occupied city’s demographic structure as well as its religious and cultural identity by destroying Muslim and Christian religious symbols there.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the official pointed out that Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip had turned the Palestinian coastal territory into a “stifling and uninhabitable prison.” The blockade amounted to “collective punishment” of the enclave’s entire territory, he added.
More than 160 Palestinians have died during Israel’s suppression of anti-occupation Palestinian protests in Gaza since March, he reminded.