ISIS and the Threadbare Scenario of “War on Terror”

 By Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini, Media Advisor to Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Syria crisis and repetition of Taliban scenario

From its very inception, the Taliban group was meant to counter the former Soviet Union and to release the Islamic world’s energy in the face of the Communism. However, in addition to playing its military role in Afghanistan, the group was employed in line with the West’s Islamophobic project and was allowed to engage in all kinds of violent and extremist acts. It was even permitted to produce and traffic illicit drugs. This state of affairs continued until the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, after which the Western world led by the United States launched its so-called “war on terror.” As a result, the United States occupied Afghanistan militarily and tried to make the most of developments that took place following the occupation of that country.

The ISIS group, likewise, was at first created in a bid to help bring down the political system in Syria. Therefore, in addition to playing a military role in the war against the Syrian president Bashar Assad, it started down the same path as Taliban had taken before in order to spread hatred of Islam and promote the West’s Islamophobic agenda. The ISIS group acquires necessary financial resources by selling oil and other natural reserves in those areas they have captured. The acme of this project was the rapid advances that the group made in Iraq and the announcement of the Islamic caliphate in parallel to terrorizing people in occupied territories as a result of heinous crimes that have been committed by this group. All these developments have provided the West, especially the United States, with a good excuse for repeated military intervention in the region.

The ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, came into being in 2011 and only one month after the beginning of the civil war in Syria. Since its very inception, there was no doubt about the terrorist nature of this Takfiri group, which at that time was considered as an offshoot of Al-Qaeda. It was fighting against the government of Syria along with other extremist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front) and made no differentiation between various tribes and religious convictions when targeting innocent people in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

Throughout the crisis in Syria, the terrorist Takfiri groups enjoyed full political support of the United States as well as direct military, financial and logistical support from countries that are considered as US allies in the region. In addition, the Zionist regime of Israel provided Takfiri forces with direct training, consultation, and medical services, in such areas as the occupied Golan Heights, Quneitra, Utaiba, and other regions along its border with Syria and even inside Israel.

More than 190,000 people have been killed during the past three years as a result of the most horrendous crimes that have been committed publicly by the ISIS and Al-Nusra Front first in Syria and then in Lebanon and Iraq. Therefore, the real question is why despite such crimes, there has been no international effort to prevent arms and money and human forces from being provided to such terrorist armed groups by certain countries in the region? Why, on the opposite, providing these groups with funds and weapons has been on the practical agenda of the West for a period of more than three years?

Alleged coalition against ISIS

The ISIS terrorist group invaded a number of cities and towns in northwestern Iraq on June 9, 2014, occupying parts of those areas, including the strategic city of Mosul, in a lightening attack. During the same time, international media announced that there were documents to prove that the US Embassy in Iraq has been aware of a plan by the ISIS and remnants of the former Baath party to launch that attack. Basically, taking into account that the United States takes advantage of the most advanced espionage satellites, it would be only ridiculous for Washington to claim that it has not been informed of the attack before it happened.

According to reports released by the United Nations, the year 2013 had been announced as the most violent year in the country following its occupation by the United States, during which a total of 8,000 people had been killed as a result of terrorist and other kinds of violent attacks in the Arab country. However, during three months that have passed since the occupation of parts of Iraq by the ISIS, at least, 5,550 people have been killed, 90 percent of whom were civilians.

Three months after the day that the ISIS started its advances and massacres in Iraq, all of a sudden, the United States, Britain, France and the NATO in general reached the conclusion that they have to curb its further progress. At the same time, none of those Western officials have taken the trouble to talk about the origins of the terrorist group as well as factors influencing its growth. Nor they have talked about the foreign support that has been accorded to the ISIS, or why regional and international players have for three full years ignored and even supported this unprecedented scale of humanitarian catastrophe against the innocent people belonging to various Arab tribes as well as Iraqi Kurds, Turkmens, Shias, Sunnis, Christians and Izadi community.

The deceiving titles chosen for meetings held in Wales, Jeddah and Paris are, per se, a telltale sign which shows that an international coalition has finally taken shape in order to rein in the ISIS. In another development, and concurrent with the annual occasion of the 9/11 terror attacks, the former commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, who has also played a crucial role in the occupation of Iraq and has actually commanded the fake US war on terror, was appointed as the commander and coordinator of the international coalition against the ISIS.

The reality about allegations of the West and the United States with regard to fighting terrorism is that such international moves have been accompanied with no sign of serious determination and decision to cut the main lifelines through which the ISIS and similar terrorist groups receive military and financial aid. There has been also no talk about possible sanctions and restrictive measures imposed on these groups to eliminate them or at least reduce their capacity; no sign of any judicial action to be taken against the leaders and main elements and other members of these groups; and no effort to at least keep in check the radical media outlets that encourage and support terrorist groups. If such measures had been taken into account since the very beginning, there would have been no need to take illegal hardware measures against them now.

Providing financial resources for terrorism as a project

Just in the same way that international banking system, which is under the influence of the US dollar, practically ignored and even facilitated transfer of money that the Taliban earned through drug trafficking in Afghanistan, the system behaved in a similar way with regard to the ISIS. Financial resources of the ISIS, which were totally dependent on foreign support and were in some cases earned through smuggling or receiving ransom for hostages, who were taken into captivity by the ISIS, have turned this Takfiri group into the wealthiest terrorist organization in the world. The ISIS has also garnered a lot of money after it gained control over rich oil reserves in the Syrian province of Raqqa and later on, in Mosul region of Iraq, not to forget a total of about 429 million dollars that the group stole from the central bank of Mosul.

Based on media reports, after the ISIS managed to take control of the biggest oil field in the area of Mosul, it started selling oil to a neighboring country at a very low price (from less than 25 dollars per barrel to 60 dollars per barrel according to various repots).

According to Hossein Allawi, a senior advisor to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, and Luay al-Khateeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha center and an advisor to the Iraqi parliament on energy policies, the ISIS is earning a total daily revenue of about 2 million dollars through oil sales in Iraq alone. Every day, 210 trucks carry the Iraqi oil out of the country and most of those trucks are destined for Turkey. Unofficial reports have also shown that the ISIS is selling a daily total of 125,000 barrels of oil in Syria and Iraq. If the unofficial figure is taken as the basis for calculation, it follows that the terrorist group is earning 3-5 million dollars a day through illegal crude oil sales in these two Arab countries.

The oil plundered and sold by terrorists in Syria has been sold at international markets by the US ExxonMobil company. On the other side, the crude oil extracted in Mosul is reportedly being sold by the national oil company of one of oil-rich neighboring countries of Iraq at international markets through all-out support of Washington.

Now, let’s not forget that the international banking system has been enforcing the strictest rules, for example, to prevent transfer of totally legitimate funds that belong to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the same time, the United Nations Security Council has various tools at its disposal in order to prevent transfer of funds that are controlled by terrorists. In view of the above fact, the question that can be raised here is how it has been possible for the ISIS to transfer millions of dollars it has earned through selling stolen oil in Iraq and Syria?

Islamophobia and Zionist interests

Despite its outward religious façade, the Takfiri terrorism, which has been targeting anti-Israel resistance in the region since its inception, has no other goal, but to serve the strategic interests of the Zionist regime of Israel and its supporters. One of the most important goals of this scenario has been to implement a plan which aims to topple or weaken the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad. Its second important goal is to complete the West’s Islamophobia plan and to show the world that Islam is more dangerous than Zionism.

All Muslim scholars have unanimously announced that the measures taken by the ISIS have nothing to do with the Islamic teachings and, on the contrary, are one hundred percent against the Islamic commands and moral code. They have clearly noted that any form of attributing this blood-thirsty, infidel and unethical terrorist group to Islam and Muslims will be a great insult and injustice to this religion. Despite this clear announcement, the Western political sources have been insisting in practice to use and recognize the self-proclaimed title of the “Islamic State,” for this group.

A more profound analysis of these developments will show that the fear and concern, which has been created in international public opinion, especially in Western countries, as a result of the images that show horrendous and inhuman crimes committed by the ISIS, has practically overshadowed the crimes committed by the Zionist regime of Israel against the innocent people of the Gaza Strip. As a result, negative propaganda against the ISIS has been used as a means of cleaning the hands of Israelis, which are already dipped in the blood of thousands of innocent Palestinian women and children. Even destruction of mosques, churches, other places of worship and pilgrimage, as well as the tombs and mausoleums of prophets by the ISIS can be used as a means to reduce the sensitivity of the world’s public opinion about the premeditated plans aimed at destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to be replaced by the Solomon’s Temple.

Speaking on September 3, 2014, the US President Barack Obama described the ISIS as a cancerous tumor while calling on governments and people across the Middle East to make a concerted effort to prevent its further growth. It goes without saying that this specific and famous phrase had been used many years ago by the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Imam Khomeini, to describe Israel and has been regularly used to that effect.

On the other hand, the prime minister of the Zionist regime of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose regime stands for the most prominent example of state terrorism, has called for a world war on terrorism in his latest remarks on September 11, 2014. He claimed that the threat posed by radicalism has led “many Sunni Arab states” to reevaluate their relationship with Israel, adding, “They [Sunni Arab states] understand Israel is not their enemy but their ally in the fight against this common enemy [ISIS]. I believe that presents an opportunity for cooperation and perhaps an opportunity for peace. ”

Therefore, in view of the above facts, the Takfiri current is not just representative of a certain kind of deviation in the Islamic thought, but more importantly, it is a purposive plot hatched by the enemies of Islam, which is also convergent with the goals pursued by the Zionist regime of Israel in the region. It is for this reason that, as we have already witnessed, the Takfiri current has never taken a step against the occupying regime of Quds and has only chosen Muslims as its targets.

In the light of these realities and due to lack of honesty on the part of those who are currently promoting this fictional scenario of the so-called “war on terrorism,” it goes without saying that there is no possibility for the Islamic Republic of Iran to cooperate with this scenario, which has been entirely meant from the very beginning to the end, to meet the inhuman and illegitimate interests of its main protagonists.

Unlike the previous supporters of the ISIS, which are now claiming to be fighting it, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been always a pioneer in fighting against all kinds of terrorist and Takfiri groups in Syria and Iraq, and has been always serious and honest in this regard. As a result, the Islamic Republic of Iran believes that any solution for the issue of terrorism should be invariably addressed at its roots, be nonselective, be aimed at the total annihilation of such groups and, above all, should show due respect for the sovereign rights of the governments of Iraq and Syria.

 See original and Arabic version here:

http://www.iranreview.org/content/Documents/ISIS-and-the-Threadbare-Scenario-of-War-on-Terror-.htm