Dreams of Splitting Islamic Countries Not to Come True: Iran’s Velayati
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Takfiri terrorists backed by certain regional countries are planning to disintegrate some Islamic countries, but their dreams will not come true, Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said.
“Takfiri groups and extremists supported by certain regional countries are trying to depict a violent image of Islam and are even planning to disintegrate some Islamic countries,” Velayati, who is also head of the strategic research center of Iran's expediency council, said in a Monday meeting with Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah Resistance Movement Seyed Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.
Velayati, at the same time noted that the enemies will not manage to realize their "inauspicious dreams" for the region and countries like Syria, Lebanon, or Iraq.
The Iranian official arrived in Lebanon on Monday on a one-day visit to the Arab country to attend and address a meeting of Muslim world scholars on Palestine.
His comments came a couple of weeks after the US Congress proposed a defense bill to consider Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis as separate countries.
The draft of the US annual defense bill, which was released on April 27 by the House Armed Services Committee, urges the US government to recognize separate Kurdish and Sunni states and provide them with at least 25 percent of the USD-715-million aid money planned to be given to the Iraqi government to help it fight the ISIL terrorist group. The draft bill also says the figure could even amount to 60 percent of the money, about USD 429 million.
The bill mandates that "the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Sunni tribal security forces with a national security mission, and the Iraqi Sunni National Guard be deemed a country," adding that doing so "would allow these security forces to directly receive assistance from the United States."
Elsewhere in his remarks, Velayati pointed to the victories in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Takfiri terrorists in the region, and expressed the hope for the eradication of such groups which he said commit crimes with the support of certain regional states.
Nasrallah, for his part, briefed the Supreme Leader’s adviser on the latest developments in the region and Hezbollah’s measures in the fight against extremism and Takfiri terrorists.
He also referred to the recent victories the Hezobollah fighters have gained in Qalamoun region, and appreciated the supports and prudence of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Hezbollah, along with the Syrian army and popular mobilization units, have achieved several victories since the offensive launched in Qalamoun nearly 2 weeks ago, including the seizure of illegal crossings used to smuggle explosives between Lebanon and Syria.