Iranian FM Calls ISIL "Global Threat"
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s Foreign Minister raised the alarm over the growing menace of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group.
“This is a very mobile organization," Zarif said of the ISIL in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations, in New York on Wednesday.
"This is not a threat against a single community nor a threat against a single region. It was not confined to Syria, nor will it be confined to Iraq. It is a global threat," he warned.
Referring to a gathering of 24 nations in a recent conference in Paris against the ISIL as "a coalition of repenters", Zarif said it's now time for the international community "and particularly the coalition of the repenters" to stop providing financing, military equipment and safe passage for the group and its fighters.
He said certain members of the so-called US-led coalition against the ISIL have already supported the terrorist group "in one form or another" from its inception.
At the end of the day, he said, they created "a Frankenstein that came to haunt its creators."
The Iranian foreign minister noted that Iran was the first country to take measures to help Iraq in the face of the Takfiri threat.
The ISIL is a militant group in Iraq and Syria believed to be supported by the West and some regional Arab countries. The terrorist group claims as an independent state the territory of Iraq and Syria, with implied future claims intended over more of the Levant, including Lebanon, occupied Palestine, Jordan, Cyprus, and Southern Turkey.
