Tillerson added, "Those militias need to go home. Any foreign fighters in Iraq
need to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control of areas that had
been overtaken by ISIL that have now been liberated. Allow the Iraqi people to
rebuild their lives with the help of their neighbors."
That these ridiculous statements were designed to appease the House of Saud
because Tillerson was speaking in Riyadh alongside the Saudi foreign minister
days after US-backed proxies declared the capture of Raqqa, ISIL's de facto
capital in Syria, is not the point here. The argument is that US occupying
forces have no right to remain in Iraq because people there don’t want them and
because they have no invitation from the central government in Baghdad. They
also have no right to occupy Syria for the same obvious reasons.
Quite the contrary, Iran has no militias in Iraq or Syria. It has military
advisors supporting the governments there and combating ISIL upon official
requests from Baghdad and Damascus. The reason the US under President Donald
Trump has assumed a more aggressive posture towards Tehran, with Trump recently
threatening to exit a multilateral agreement with Iran over its nuclear program,
is that Iran’s unconditional support in the war against ISIL and other American
terror proxies has paid off – something the War Party in Washington and its
regional allies never anticipated when their creation ISIL conquered large
swathes of land in the Levant equipped with American weaponry and Saudi cash.
That also says why Tillerson is now warning countries from doing business with
the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), an Iranian military body that helped
the armed forces of Iraq and Syria dislodge ISIL fighters from many cities and
towns when Washington was looking the other way and its terror proxies were busy
committing human rights abuses and war crimes, or sowing instability throughout
the region and beyond - even launching terror attacks in Europe.
Which leads us to this inevitable conclusion: It is the United States which has
been destabilizing the Middle East and whose forces need to leave the region -
and not Iranian forces which are sacrificing their lives to defeat terrorism and
restore peace and stability throughout the region and beyond.
The US and its allies are solely responsible for all the divisions among
Muslims. They blame the victim of imperialism as the Israelis blame the
Palestinians for the latter’s chronic subjugated condition. It is hypocritical
for Tillerson and other Western politicians, the media and analysts that reflect
"fakestream” views to argue that Iranians – or the IRGC –create instability and
political problems in Iraq and Syria.
The US has created a monstrous mess in the Middle East. This is in part because
it has been trying unsuccessfully to determine the regional balance of power
where Iran is at the core in the region. One result of US destabilization policy
is ISIL. It is reprehensible that Washington and apologists of Western
imperialism without any sense of historical context and self-criticism insist
that the ongoing violence is a problem solely created by Iran and its allies -
and not ‘militias’. Without the American-Saudi money, guns and ammunition,
political support, and covert operations to facilitate such operations intended
to secure the goal of regime change how far would ISIL and Al-Qaeda succeed in
carrying out their operations?
No one should be surprised at the arrogance of American politicians and
well-paid consultants and analysts echoing official policy when it comes to the
Middle East and victim blaming which is official policy in Washington and Tel
Aviv and adopted by both Republican and Democrat politicians and the
"fakestream” media. This is archaic imperialist mindset applied by the West to
the non-Western world dating back to the era of European colonialism.
US volte face from collaboration with ISIL terrorists to confrontation is all
too familiar a story as well. Even as the US and the West in 2015 publicly
proclaimed their resolve on the war on terror and opposition to ISIL in Iraq,
they were still backing the same terrorist groups and Qaeda-linked proxies in
Syria.
When ISIL bombed a civilian Russian plane in over northern Sinai on 31 October
2015, followed by an attack on Hezbollah in Beirut two weeks later, Western
governments and media had no problem because the targets were pro-Assad. In
fact, the Western media criticized President Vladimir Putin for striking ISIL
targets, prompting the US to assist ISIL indirectly by providing air cover to
protect certain pro-West assets in Syria along the Turkish border. Always
reflecting US official position, the "fakestream” media sent the message to the
world that the problem at hand was really Iran, Putin, Assad, and Hezbollah
rather than the barbaric ISIL that Russian fighter planes were targeting; that
is until the Paris massacre.
Washington’s double-standard behind which rests the destabilization policy as a
priority is still revealing. It is one reason that prompts the allied forces of
Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and Popular Mobilisation Units to continue to support
the national armed forces of Iraq and Syria to fight foreign-backed terrorism
and extremism to the end.
Source: Fars News Agency