Since July last year, a UK-led Western “special” mission has been training Ukrainian civilians from all walks of life into soldiers and dispatching them back to Ukraine.

Since the start of this “special program” dubbed “Operation Interflex,” there have been 17,000 Ukrainian civilian volunteers who have undergone quick training and have now turned into soldiers.

They have been specialized in various aspects of combat warfare, including the use of assault weapons, patrol tactics and have been returning to what is now fierce fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

The goal is to transform even more Ukrainian civilians into soldiers by 2024.

The British Ministry of Defense said, “This program has now been extended and is on track to train the pledged 30,000 recruits by 2024.”

The ministry alleges that “intelligence has shown that the training has already made a significant difference to the combat effectiveness of Ukraine.”

“The UK Armed Forces maintains close communication with Ukraine to improve and evolve the course based on the skills most needed on the battlefield,” it added.

This suggests NATO has no plan to end the Ukraine crisis this year. The U.S.-led military alliance is prolonging the war as long as possible.

The aim is not to defeat Russia entirely but an attempt to drain the Russian military as well as its energy and economic resources. If NATO had the capability to defeat Russia militarily, it would have done so. But it doesn’t.

The Western military alliance is seeking the demise of the Russian Federation’s superpower status. For that same reason the West is trying to uphold NATO’s apparent military superiority in the face of China.

The British commander of the 11th security force assistance brigade Justin Stenhouse says, “The grueling five-week package takes a civilian from many different walks of life and gives them the skillsets needed to become survivable and lethal.”

Other military experts would argue it would require much longer than five weeks to transform “a civilian from many different walks of life” into a soldier entering a warzone, no matter how “grueling” the training is.

The UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, who has visited the Ukrainian recruits on several occasions during their five-week training program, further claims “the determination and resilience of the Ukrainian recruits that arrive on British soil, from all walks of life, to train to fight alongside our British and international forces, is humbling to witness.”

These civilians are potentially being sent to their deathbed. Does it matter for NATO? Apparently not. As long as it can prolong the war.

Russia is targeted as it is geographically closer to the transatlantic, with NATO forces expanding their presence closer to Russian borders.

This buildup of advanced military weaponry by NATO, especially during the five to seven years before the conflict broke out in February 2021, was a clear provocation against Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The war could end today, if NATO provides Russia with security guarantees. In that case the deadly armed clashes between ethnic Russians (living in the eastern Donbass region on the border with Russia) and the Ukrainian military will come to a halt in line with the Minsk agreement.

NATO doesn’t appear to be interested in peace.

Instead, it is turning civilians with five weeks of training into soldiers and has shipped the largest cache of weapons to a conflict in modern history, with similar low levels of training on how to use those weapons.

Many NATO members have delivered so much arms to Ukraine that they have depleted their own stockpiles, leaving themselves vulnerable to the alarm of their security chiefs.

The United Kingdom is leading “Operation Interflex”, alongside Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania and the Netherlands.

None of these countries face a national security risk from Russia. This is one of the reasons why they have not directly fought in the war against Russia.
They are instead using Ukraine as a proxy to wage the fight on NATO’s behalf.

Stenhouse also claims, “The solidarity from both the British and multinational forces training the Ukrainians when combined with their determination has forged bonds that will last the length of time.”

The military training of Ukrainian civilians raises questions over how many soldiers Kyiv has lost since the start of the conflict.

According to a social media post by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (that has since been removed), more than 100,000 Ukrainian military personnel have died to date.

Her remarks were also repeated in a speech by a senior EU official and published on the European Commission’s website.

On both platforms, von der Leyen’s statements have been republished or reposted with the section on the Ukrainian military fatality figure deleted.

This would explain why the West has turned to Ukrainian civilians to prolong the war despite that fact that there is no national security risk to the UK – where the training is being done, from Russia.

The West claims it is arming Ukraine and training its civilian volunteers to save Ukrainian civilians from Russian attacks.

Evidence on the ground shows there have been many civilian deaths among ethnic Russians during the current conflict since February 2021, and during the first conflict that erupted in 2014, between ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s east and the Ukrainian army.

But there was no “special” program to train and save the ethnic Russian population who have died since 2014 in attacks launched by Ukraine.

This is despite the fact that mainstream Western media had visited the sites of the attacks on civilians and field reports on civilian deaths among ethnic Russians since 2014, at times Western reporters even shed real tears, not crocodile tears, during their coverage.

That all changed in February 2021, and the reports from eastern Ukraine came to an end by the Western mainstream media.

There was a national security risk to Europe from the Daesh (ISIL) when they captured swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

A number of brutal terrorist attacks claimed by Daesh were carried out on European soil, leading to the unfortunate killing of hundreds of European residents.

There was also no program led by the UK or any NATO or Western country to train Iraqi or Syrian civilians who had volunteered to help in the fight against the savage terrorist group.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians perished in Syria and Iraq as a result of barbaric acts by Daesh and other terrorist groups. The death toll pales in comparison to the civilian death toll in Ukraine, which is less than nine thousand, according to the UN Human Rights Office.

The volunteers in Syria and Iraq were left to fend for themselves, with the exception of two neighbors in the region.

In fact, foreign volunteers who fought terrorism in Iraq and Syria and helped bring security to the region and Europe were sent to prison on their return back home.

Had it not been for Iranian military advisors as well as military advisors from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Daesh would still be occupying Syria and Iraq. This would have resulted in further terrorist attacks on European soil.

Perhaps the West is envisioning a similar scenario for Russia as in Iraq and Syria in the Daesh days.

The post What is “Operation Interflex”? appeared first on Iran News Daily.

Eleven Iraqi soldiers were killed in the early hours of Friday in an attack carried out by Daesh. The attack took place in the Diyala governorate, eastern Iraq. It happened out of the blue. The Daesh terrorists raided an Iraqi Army barrack in the Al-Adhim county and killed all the troops stationed there including a number of officers. The attackers escaped after the attack.

The attack was remarkable in terms of casualties. Iran announced the defeat of Daesh in 2017 and since then the terrorist group had been unable to mount large-scale attacks, though it continued its hit-and-run raids in regions over which Iraqi armed forces lack tight control.

Daesh has increased the pace of its sporadic attacks in Iraq in recent months, operating from safe havens away from the eyes of the authorities. Diyala was its favorite theatre where a series of attacks raised alarm bells in Baghdad. In late December, released footage showing an Iraqi officer with the Iraqi Interior Ministry being decapitated. The officer, named Yaser al-Jourani, had been abducted by Daesh while on a hunting trip a week earlier.

In October last year, Daesh sought to play on sectarian disputes in Diyala. It launched bloody attacks in the governorate that sparked sectarian violence. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said at the time that Daesh was looking for a foothold in Diyala.

Iraqi security forces launched counterattacks to eliminate the threats posed by Daesh.

Daesh also went on a rampage in neighboring Syria, where it is fighting a bloody battle with Kurdish forces in the Syrian city of Al-Hasakah. Daesh forces attacked a prison in the city to release their fellow terrorists.

Over 120 people have been killed in the fight over the control of Ghweran prison in Hasaka, northeast Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

The fighting continued for the fourth consecutive day in northeastern Syria between Daesh and the Kurdish forces, which are responsible for Ghweran prison, which includes more than three thousand suspected members of Daesh.

Some Daesh inmates have fled the prison.

Syria’s Foreign Ministry has condemned “the actions that led to the displacement of thousands of Syrian citizens in Al-Hasakah Governorate and increased their suffering.”

In Iraq, the government is taking precautionary measures to prevent any Daesh attacks. Iraqi security forces closed down the entrances to the capital Baghdad as security measures were tightened.

A spokesman for the Iraqi Armed Forces Command had previously stated that the border would be completely secure as security measures were tightened along the Iraqi-Syrian border after a number of Daesh terrorists escaped from the Hasakah prison in Syria.

The Iraqi official also stressed that the remnants of Daesh are not capable of confronting Iraqi forces and are in no way a threat to the security apparatus.

The reoccurrence of Daesh attacks came at a time when Iraqi political factions are going through intense talks to appoint a president and form a new government in the coming weeks. Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose factions won the greatest number of seats in the recent parliamentary elections, has not reached an agreement yet with other Shia factions over who would be the next prime minister of Iraq.

Some observers have posited that Sadr may need to hammer out a deal will his Shia rivals soon given the gravity of the security situation.

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Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani made the remarks at the third edition of the Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan, a meeting of national security advisers from regional countries, which kicked off in the Indian capital earlier on Wednesday.

“Twenty years ago, the United States occupied Afghanistan under the pretext of confronting the Taliban and al-Qaeda, claiming to be fighting terrorism and preaching that ‘I want to turn Afghanistan into a role model and a source of inspiration,” he said.

However, instead of acting on such a claim, it made the situation in Afghanistan even worse, he said. “Terrorism, poverty and misery, as well as drug cultivation and trafficking and migration, increased while a large number of innocent people in Afghanistan were massacred by American fighter jets at weddings and mourning ceremonies for vague reasons. The state- and nation-building claimed by the United States ground to a halt.”

Shamkhani said the U.S. turned out to be a failure even in its “most basic role, i.e. the establishment of the army and security system,” which quickly collapsed after Washington and its allies left Afghanistan and the Taliban group took over.

Having faced a “humiliating defeat,” the United States was forced to escape from Afghanistan, after inflicting huge damage on the country, most significantly the carnage of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, Shamkhani added.

He said the U.S. eventually “became a lesson to all those who seek their survival in resorting to fake powers like the United States instead of relying on their own resources.”

The Iranian official said the Americans “acted deceitfully” even in the issue of peace in Afghanistan and had no plans to promote peace in the country contrary to its claims. Washington, he added, was only after finding a way out of the crisis of its own making and chose to cause trouble for the region and the entire world due to its “hegemonic nature and superiority complex.”

“That is why the Islamic Republic of Iran did not take part in any so-called peace or dialogue format or process that the United States would create” during the occupation period, Shamkhani said.

On the contrary, he said, Iran “tried, through cooperation with internal and external players in Afghanistan, to move toward plans which would truly serve the interests of our oppressed brothers and sisters in Afghanistan and those of the neighbors and the entire region, as well as [plans] that would establish broad-based, lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan that would meet the common interests of us all.”

Shamkhani also stressed the need for the United Nations to play a role in the consultations and efforts to assist the Afghan people.

“Today, Afghanistan is left with a pile of problems and we are all duty-bound to drive the country to safety,” the top security official said.

“The focus should now be for the United States and its partners in the 20-year-long occupation of Afghanistan to accept responsibility. Compensating for the losses of life and material damage inflicted to the people of Afghanistan is the least responsibility of the occupiers.

He said everyone knows, however, that a great portion of the damage was “irreparable,” adding, “Is it possible to compensate for the lost lives or the damage inflicted to the human body and soul, or to restore the lost time to build a nation and a country? On the contrary, we see that the United States, in a hostile and arrogant act, has banned the Afghan people’s access to their small assets,” referring to the sanctions the U.S. imposed on the country after its exit.

Shamkahni also pointed to the threats posed by the growth of Daesh and other Takfiri terrorist groups in Afghanistan to the country’s neighbors and those states in the region that have no common borders with it.

He further highlighted three issues of concern in Afghanistan that should be resolved through regional cooperation, namely the involvement of some countries in transferring Takfiri terrorists to Afghanistan, the spread of poverty and humanitarian crisis, and the migration crisis.

He enumerated the “important duties” that Afghanistan’s neighbors need to fulfill in the process to help settle the crises unfolding in the South Asian state, including efforts “to hold to account the countries behind the current situation in Afghanistan,” “establish an inclusive government comprised of all ethnicities” there, and tackle the humanitarian crisis gripping the war-torn country.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran declares its readiness to offer all the facilities at its disposal, such as roads and ports, to help resolve this [humanitarian] crisis,” the top security official said.

Shamkhani said regional countries should also “exert pressure on the United States to unblock the financial resources of the oppressed Afghan nation so it can benefit from its own resources and facilities.”

Furthermore, he added, the participants in the summit should work to confront Daesh and Takfiri terrorists operating Afghanistan, identify the channels through which they are financed, and cut those lines.

The neighbors should likewise address the migration crisis and help the countries hosting Afghan refugees, according to him.

Shamkhani elaborated on the case of Iran and said the country had been hosting over three million Afghan migrants and paying around 96 percent of the costs on its own, while international institutions had only provided for four percent only.

He warned that Iran “we will not be able to host a new influx [of refugees] due to the unjust sanctions imposed against our people. In case other countries and relevant international institutions fail to offer assistance with this issue, we won’t be able to manage [the situation] and the Western states, like it or not, will be affected.”

The Iranian official called for broadening the topics on the agenda of the Afghanistan summits and proposed the formation of a permanent secretariat aimed at following up on the resolutions adopted at the events.

He said Tehran could host the proposed secretariat.

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For starters, before the American-led invasion in 2001, there was no such Takfiri terrorist entity called Daesh in existence. Not in Afghanistan, not in West Asia, and nowhere else in the world. Only After America’s so-called “war on terror” and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria did terrorist groups with extremely Takfiri ideologies emerge. Such as the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front which chops the heads of civilians in front of the village elders for a living and the much more barbaric Daesh Takfiri group. There is many more of these org organizations but not enough space to name them.

Many have accused the United States and its allies of creating and funding these Takfiri terrorist groups; among those who have made those allegations include former U.S. President Donald Trump who blamed his predecessors. Thanks to Wikileaks which leaked Hillary Clinton’s emails, the former U.S. Secretary of State, said: “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

What about President Joe Biden himself? He had previously told students at the Harvard Kennedy School “our biggest problem was our allies, the Turks… the Saudis, the Emirates, etc., what were they doing? They were so determined to take down (Syrian President Bashar al) Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.” He added that these policies ended up helping Takfiri militants linked to al-Qaeda and ultimately Daesh.

Countries such as Russia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and others have long accused the United States of supporting Daesh.

Remember America supported militants against the Soviet Union that went on to form the al-Qaeda terror group, America supported the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein who became a monster, the same can be said about militants in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. Some analysts say American foreign policy in West Asia has always been a disaster with the creation of terror groups and instability. But the real question is whether this policy is intentional? Surely after decades, a country would learn that arming the wrong groups, again and again, will create terror; yet that doesn’t appear to be the case for America.

So is it really surprising to hear reports that Taliban leaders and former Afghan republic security officials saying the number of U.S. trained defectors joining the Daesh terrorist group is relatively small, but growing? And that more crucially, these new recruits bring to Daesh vital expertise in intelligence-gathering and warfare techniques, potentially strengthening the extremist organization’s ability to contest Taliban supremacy. Or to put it more simply carry on the instability, violence, and terror in Afghanistan. Continue the status quo before the U.S. withdrew.

After all, trillions of dollars have been spent on this occupation so why would America want to see stability or security in the country. If it did, Washington would not have led the invasion in the first place 20 years ago with the aim of causing sedition in West Asia and surrounding the Islamic Republic of Iran by invading Iraq as well.

In Syria and Iraq some groups began as al-Qaeda terrorists, then rebranded their names (or were ordered to do so) to get funding and weapons; then changed their names again, such as the Nusra Front for example. But they never changed their ideology. And if you ask any military expert; they will tell you defeating a terrorist group on the battlefield is just part of the solution. You have to defeat the ideology and that is something that cannot be achieved by guns.

Do you really invade and occupy an entire country to take out Osama Bin Laden, one single terrorist? An individual that could have been killed with a drone strike in Afghanistan; as it turned out he wasn’t in Afghanistan in the first place anyway. So much for U.S. intelligence.

What makes this report by the Wall Street Journal more disturbing for the international community is recent comments by the Russian military. Dmitry Shugayev, the chief of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation says the vast amount of advanced U.S. military hardware abandoned in Afghanistan may appear on the black market, which will create problems for the whole world. He warns “that the Americans have squandered a mammoth amount of money on weapons and other military equipment has become a terrible headache not only for Afghanistan but for the whole world as well to an extent because various terrorist organizations are entrenched there. It should not be ruled out that they may lay [their] hands on this arsenal if they have not done so already”

He also warned that there was a high risk that these weapons might begin to be sold on the illegal market. “In other words, they may surface anywhere in the world. In all likelihood, some very unpleasant surprises may be in store for us. The more so, since the equipment the United States has left behind is a lot more serious than popguns.”

According to Kazakhstan’s President, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the day that the U.S. troops pulled out of Afghanistan, they abandoned $85 billion worth of sophisticated weapons. Other separate reports had also indicated a similar figure, with some referring to former U.S. President Donald Trump as a source.

According to the Wall Street Journal, an Afghan national army officer who commanded the military’s weapons and ammunition depot in the southeastern Paktia province joined Daesh and was killed a week ago in a clash with Taliban forces, according to a former Afghan official who knew him. The former official said several other men he knew all members of the former Afghan republic’s intelligence and military, also joined Daesh after the Taliban searched their homes and demanded that they present themselves to the country’s new authorities.

The WSJ also reports that a resident in district north of Kabul says his cousin; a former senior member of Afghanistan’s Special Forces, disappeared in September and was now part of a Daesh terror cell. Four other members of the Afghan national army that the man knew have enlisted with the terrorists.

Rahmatullah Nabil, a former head of Afghanistan’s spy agency, the National Directorate of Security, who left the country shortly before the Taliban takeover says “In some areas, Daesh has become very attractive” to former members of Afghan security and defense forces “who have been left behind.” “If there were a resistance, they would have joined the resistance.” But he said, “For the time being, Daesh is the only other armed group.”

Does that sound close to what the U.S. deep state is trying to implement. Withdraw from the country after 20 years of violence, but leave behind $85 billion worth of sophisticated weapons, leave behind a security vacuum and leave behind tens of thousands of former soldiers without a payroll and Daesh terrorists with plenty of money to pay them. Then, expand Daesh in Afghanistan and use the group as a proxy to continue the bombing of mosques and other forms of insecurity. And it’s not difficult to believe that Daesh ringleaders have always been informed of the plan.

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Western media blames “Islamic extremism” for these and similar events. But Daesh, far from being an authentic Islamic liberation group, is actually a tool of anti-Islamic forces. To understand the true role and origins of Daesh, we need to understand the geostrategic imperatives and false flag tactics of the imperialist invaders of the Muslim world.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, perhaps the single most important force behind the post-1979 US presence in Afghanistan, famously wrote: “The three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”

Today, a great many nations could be called either tributaries or vassals of the US empire (which might be more accurately termed the Anglo-Zionist empire, the Western bankster empire, or the NATO empire). To the extent that a nation’s banking system is linked to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and other Western-dominated financial institutions, that nation could be considered one of the empire’s tributaries; while those nations that host US military forces, and/or cooperate with US/NATO military ventures, might be called vassals.

Then who are Brzezinski’s “barbarians”? They are the nations that refuse to be dominated by the empire’s military and financial control systems.

US-occupied Afghanistan was a de facto tributary and vassal from 2001 through 2021. In August of this year, it rejoined the ranks of “barbarians” (nations that resist the imperial system). By doing so, it set itself up to be targeted by the empire’s covert operators, whose mission is to “keep the barbarians from uniting.”

The empire will implement its divide-and-conquer strategy against Afghanistan on two levels. First, it will try to foment fractiousness and chaos within the borders of Afghanistan, using false flag operations as its primary tactic. Second, it will try to divide the government of Afghanistan from other “barbarian” nations outside the imperial system.

The empire’s primary tool for dividing-and-conquering Afghanistan is Daesh. Branded “ISIS-K” in English—a name that sounds like a pagan breakfast cereal—Daesh routinely attacks civilian targets with the aim of inciting ethnic and sectarian strife. Though Daesh pretends its goal is to unify the Muslim world, its real objective is precisely the opposite: to “keep the Muslims from uniting,” as Brzezinski would put it. Currently Daesh is being deployed by its controllers to destabilize the Taliban government in Kabul, which has set out to establish a government of national unity under Islam that would be considerably more inclusive than the tribalist Taliban governments of the 1990s.

The empire has unleashed Daesh as a weapon against the Taliban’s unifying efforts. By slaughtering Hazara Muslim worshippers and other innocent civilians, while simultaneously attacking the Taliban, Daesh hopes to turn Shia and Sunni Muslims against each other, while provoking ethnic strife in order to prevent the peaceful unification of Afghanistan.

The empire also hopes that its Daesh mercenaries will wreck Afghanistan’s relations with Iran, and by extension with the Iran-Russia-China bloc that is rising to challenge the empire’s dominance in Eurasia. Daesh’s ferocious pseudo-Sunni sectarianism is not only anathema to Iran, but also alienates Russia and China, which have their own problems with “Islamic terrorism.” While using Daesh to destabilize Afghanistan and ruin relations with its neighbors, the empire also can send its Daesh terrorist shock troops to serve as mercenaries against the Chinese in Xinjiang, the Russians in Chechnya and across Russia’s southern border, and the Iranians and their allies in the Muslim East.

Daesh terrorism also serves as a psychological weapon against Islam in general and the post-1979 Islamic Awakening in particular. Public relations experts and psychological operations specialists know that the best way to discredit a message is to put it in the mouth of a loathsome spokesperson. Today, the noble Islamic concept of jihad, which means “struggle in the path of God,” has been equated in the public mind with the horrific terrorist atrocities of Daesh. In reality, jihad can refer to either the struggle to be a better person (greater jihad) or the struggle to defend the community (lesser jihad). But thanks to false flag terror groups like Daesh, when the non-Muslim public hears the word jihad it thinks of appalling attacks on civilians.

More specifically, Daesh has been tasked by the empire with discrediting Muslim unity. Daesh pretends that its mission is to establish a universal Islamic caliphate. But by using the most mindlessly heinous terrorist tactics imaginable, Daesh creates the impression that only bloodthirsty homicidal maniacs favor Islamic unity. That impression is far from the truth! In reality, polls have showed that roughly two-thirds of the residents of the biggest contiguous Muslim countries are in favor of abolishing national borders and establishing a unified pan-Islamic ummah. And they want to do it peacefully. That prospect terrifies the empire—which, if the Muslim “barbarians” united, would lose its control over the world’s most strategic lands and resources. Even worse, from the empire’s perspective, is that a pan-Islamic ummah would use its energy resources to annihilate the Western bankers’ monopoly on currency, overthrowing the current riba (usury) banking system in favor of an Islamic non-usurious alternative.

Additionally, a unified House of Islam would quickly expel the genocidal Zionist squatters from Palestine. The illegitimate Zionist entity only survives due to the division and fractiousness in the Muslim world. So Daesh divides and subjugates Muslims, and discredits their pan-Islamic unity efforts, on behalf of Zionism as well as imperialism.

When we pray for the victims of Daesh’s terror bombings, we should recognize their status as martyrs in the larger struggle to defend the Muslim-majority lands against invaders and plunderers, as well as in the moral struggle of right against wrong.
Dr. Kevin Barrett is an Arabist-Islamologist scholar and one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. From 1991 through 2006 Dr. Barrett taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris and Wisconsin.

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Abdollahian made the remarks in a phone call with OIC Secretary General Yousef al-Othaimeen on Monday.

Pointing to the acts of terrorism by Daesh in Afghanistan, he threw Iran’s weight behind more active role of the OIC, particularly its chief, in dealing with the ongoing problems in the war-ravaged country.

Noting that said extremist groups are among the most important challenges facing the region, Abdollahian emphasized that the OIC chief and its members should condemn Daesh’s inhumane measures, including the group’s recent “terrorist and criminal” attacks at two mosques in the Afghan cities of Kunduz and Kandahar.

More than 60 people were killed in three back-to-back explosions that hit the Bibi Fatima mosque during Friday prayers in Kandahar. It came just a week after a bomb attack killed more than 50 worshippers and left over 140 others injured at a Shia mosque in the northeastern city of Kunduz.

Both tragedies were claimed by a local affiliate of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, which has a long history of attacking Afghanistan’s Shia minority.

In a telephone conversation with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, late on Monday, the Iranian foreign minister also said it is “necessary” that terrorist attacks in Afghanistan be condemned by “all Muslim countries in the world”.

Abdollahian also said the current rulers of Afghanistan should provide security for the people and launch an “effective campaign” against terrorist groups.

In another phone call with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Iran’s chief diplomat said terrorist attacks on Afghan worshippers coupled with new wave of Afghan refugees have made the duty of the UN heavier than ever.

President Ebrahim Raeisi of Iran said on Sunday that Daesh terrorism seeks to complete a failed mission pursued by Western occupiers in Afghanistan, calling on Afghan officials to use national capacities and ensure security in the country.

OIC says Afghanistan should not turn into terrorist groups’ safe haven

Othaimeen, for his part, outlined the OIC measures to resolve problems in Afghanistan and said the country should not turn into a safe haven for terrorist groups.

He stressed the importance of forming an inclusive government in Afghanistan, observing human rights, particularly rights of women, and showing solidarity with the Afghan people.

Professor Paul Pillar, a nonresident senior fellow of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, tells the Tehran Times that “the Taliban need to be far more inclusive so that they can credibly represent themselves as a government for all Afghans.”  Pillar says “so far the regime the Taliban have erected is very narrow, consisting mainly of Pashtun men who are not representative of the whole population in terms of ethnicity, religion, or gender.”

Othaimeen emphasized that the OIC does not discriminate between followers of Islam and believes that all Muslims enjoy equal human rights.

Muslims and worshippers of any religion should not be targeted by terrorist attacks, the OIC secretary general said.

Othaimeen also pointed to recent talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, expressing hope that such negotiations and contacts would continue and result in positive outcomes for both countries.

Iraq has hosted several rounds of direct talks between Iranian and Saudi delegations since April with the aim of resurrecting relations severed five years ago over a host of issues.

The negotiations were launched under Iran’s former President Hassan Rouhani, and continued with renewed vigor by the new administration headed by Raeisi.

The Iranian foreign minister also praised efforts by the OIC secretariat to help facilitate the reopening of Iran’s mission to the organization in the Saudi port city of Jeddah.

Speaking at his weekly press conference on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia have progressed based on “mutual respect”.

He said the two sides have discussed “bilateral and regional issues” in the ongoing talks, with Iran underlining its concerns in unambiguous words.

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The bloodbath in Kabul Airport has frightened the Western forces in Afghanistan and they are leaving the country one after the other one in order to avoid more casualties after the U.S. irresponsible decision over pulling out its forces without preparing the ground.

After Iraq now Afghanistan seems to be a quagmire for the Western troops and especially for the Americans who used to dominate the region by pouring their troops to countries. Dominance of Taliban in Afghanistan has happened very fast and beyond expectations and it has stepped up pressure on the U.S. which decided to leave the country after spending trillions of dollars and not to support the ruling country.

The U.S. forces entered Afghanistan after terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in order to contain the terrorism but they only brought violence and insecurity for the Afghan people.

This decision has shattered the world’s trust towards the U.S. and actually towards the Western countries which always claim of restoring peace in the countries by a sending troops and dominating the governments.

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has repeatedly reiterated that the U.S. and its Western allies cannot be trusted and the nations in the region should stand on their own feet and resolve their problems by themselves rather than relying on the assistance of the aliens.

The U.S. military exit from Afghanistan is due to be completed by August 31 and Taliban does not intend to extend it.  According to reports, the Americans are destroying any document in Afghanistan to fully leave this country. The U.S. military has reportedly destroyed the final Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) base in Kabul, as it is preparing to leave Afghanistan after implementing a policy of death and destruction in the country for twenty years.

The New York Times reported that the CIA outpost, called Eagle Base, outside the Kabul airport was destroyed on Thursday, after a suicide attack on the Kabul airport claimed by Daesh killed at least 180 people, including 13 US service members — the deadliest for American forces in Afghanistan in over a decade.

A controlled detonation was reportedly used to blow up Eagle Base, where the U.S. agency said it trained Afghan counterterrorism forces and intelligence agencies. “They were an exceptional unit,” said Mick Mulroy, a former CIA officer who served in Afghanistan.

“They were one of the primary means the Afghan government has used to keep the Taliban at bay over the last 20 years. They were the last ones fighting, and they took heavy casualties,” he claimed.

Eagle Base had been used throughout the two-decade U.S. war in the country. It grew from a small outpost to a sprawling center.

Meanwhile, the U.S. embassy in the Afghan capital told Americans at the Kabul airport gates to “leave immediately,” citing “security threats.”

“U.S. citizens who are at the Abbey gate, East gate, North gate or the New Ministry of Interior gate now should leave immediately,” the embassy said in the alert posted on Friday night.

The report said that blowing up the Kabul base was meant to destroy equipment and documents in order to prevent them from falling into the Taliban’s possession.

The U.S. hegemonic policies in the world and especially in the region and West Asia have reached a dead-end and its troops have been in a quagmire that now President Joe Biden has decided to pull them out of the region to avoid suffering more casualty no matter what the world thinks of the U.S. responsible acts.

As the political experts believe, the aliens and especially Western forces will have to leave the region because of the awakening of the nations and governments and above all mistrust of them towards the West.

The West has proved that it has not been a true and honest partner and ally for any country and government in the region when it is needed what like it happened in Afghanistan. The recent development in Afghanistan and rush of Western troops to leave the country is a good sign for the nations in the region to get rid of foreign forces whose presence is just for looting the countries and exploiting the nations.

Now the countdown has begun for the American forces to fully leave Iraq which is the main quagmire for them and Iraqi people are eagerly waiting for the exit of forces and cleaning their country from the aliens.

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Although Jo Biden Administration has announced the exit of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, American troops have not left fully or they have not even stopped supporting terrorists. Everybody knows that terrorist groups in the region have been created or supported by the U.S. The terrorist group like Daesh and anti-revolutionary Iranian MKO grouplet are tools in hands of the Americans to balance the equation in favor of the West

In recent days the U.S. forces have come under attacks in Iraq and Syria as Syrian and Iraqi groups all have urged for immediate exit of the U.S. forces because they believe their countries can resolve their own problems and there needs no aliens’ presence in their countries.

In recent meeting between Iranian and Syrian officials, Speaker of Syrian People’s Assembly Hammoudeh Sabbagh said forces of global aggression, led by the U.S., besiege Syria and Iran together under the false guise of fighting terrorism but in fact they support and protect the scourge.

Over the past years, the U.S. has been maintaining an illegal military presence on Syrian soil, collaborating with anti-Damascus militants and stealing the country’s crude oil resources.

It has also slapped rounds of crippling sanctions on Syria, which has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011.

Meanwhile in the meeting Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Faisal al-Mekdad, said Iran plays an important role at all political, military, and economic levels to support Syria in its fight against terrorism,.

“Those who defeated Daesh and other terrorist organizations are not [the ones] who claim to have formed an alliance for this purpose,” he added, noting that the alliance was fighting against everything in the region except the terrorists.

Despite Syrian people’s demand for the exit of the U.S. troops from the country, the troops are in Syria and nowadays they see reactions from the Syrian groups. On Saturday, a powerful explosion has rocked the gas refinery that U.S. forces are using as a military base in the east of the Syrian province of Dayr al-Zawr.

According to a war monitor, the blast was caused by a mortar shell landed in the Conoco gas field, where American troops are stationed.

A U.S. military official, speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, said the incident left no casualties or damage.

These attacks against the U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq have increased and American officials have no way but to pull back their forces from the region or else they should see more casualties in the future because people in the region do not tolerate occupation of their lands by the aliens and the U.S. is not in a position to determine the fates of the nations in any part of the world.

Over the past years, the U.S. has been maintaining an illegal military presence on Syrian soil, collaborating with anti-Damascus militants and stealing the country’s crude oil resources.

The American troops under the pretext of restoring peace and security are present in Iraq and Syria and they are actually supporting the terrorist groups and opposition groups in both countries because the terrorists are their tools and pretext for staying in the region.

They back anti-revolutionary Iranian terrorist group for conducting terrorist acts and espionage in Iran and they support the Daesh in Iraq and Syria for bloodshed and crating panic in those countries in order to keep foreign forces in the region.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly said that there needs no foreign forces’ presence in the region or meddling into the regional states’ internal affairs and they can resolve their problems by own but everybody knows that this is the nature of the world arrogance that it should be present in countries in order to control the governments and nations and this will help them to loot the wealth of those countries.

But the Americans and the Westerns should take into consideration that people in the world now are wise and they have woke up and it will not let them dominate the countries and shape the fate of the nations. The era of occupation and looting of the countries has come to an end and support of the terrorist groups in vain against the strong determination of the nations and collective cooperation of the countries in fighting the terrorist groups.

So it is better the aliens to leave the region and the countries and to stop supporting and harboring the terrorists.

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Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh, Iran’s permanent ambassador to the UN office in Geneva, made the remarks on Thursday while addressing the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council.

He was addressing a report last year by Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, about the assassination, that sufficed to describe it as “arbitrary killing.”

According to Press TV, the Iranian diplomat called the designation a mere understatement of the terrorist crime that failed to depict the enormity of the “unjust, illegal, and barbaric murder.”

Callamard’s description, he said, should not lead to any underestimation of the gravity of “this act of state terrorism”.

General Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was martyred together with his companions in a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad’s airport in January 2020. The attack took place while General Soleimani was paying an official visit to the Iraqi capital.

The strike was directly ordered by former U.S. president Donald Trump.

Among other martyrs in the strike were senior Iraqi counterterrorism commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Both commanders had earned huge admiration both inside their respective countries and throughout the region.

General Soleimani’s reputation has registered him as the region’s most decisive and popular anti-terror military official, who led the region’s successful battle against the terrorist group of Daesh.

Baghaei Hamaneh described General Soleimani as a “true defender of the human rights as well as an opponent of occupation and Daesh’s terrorism.”

“This measure (targeting him) was an international crime that came to threaten the international peace and security too,” he added.

The culpability of the U.S. administration, including those who were involved in the assassination, is clear to see, the diplomat said.

“The Iranian people, who know [General] Soleimani as the model of a soldier, and the entire people of the region, who see their liberation from the scourge of Daesh is owed to his sacrifice, will never stop demanding justice for this tremendous crime,” he stated.

The world’s human rights organizations are expected to pay heed to the sheer scope of the crime and its lasting repercussions for the rule of law as well as human rights and dignity, Baghaei Hamaneh said.

The bodies have to realize the full extent of this “clear example of lawlessness and insult against the basic right to life,” he concluded.

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“I have been shouting out the vigor, humanity, pacifism and courage of Martyr Soleimani, not just before the great people of Iran and not only today, but before the entire world and for more than two decades,” Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday morning.

Zarif also attached a video of himself paying tribute to the late general on Tuesday while visiting a memorial built at the location of his assassination near Baghdad International Airport.

General Soleimani headed Iran’s anti-terror campaign in the region as the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force until his martyrdom, on January 3, 2020, in a drone strike directly ordered by former US president Donald Trump.

Zarif said he once again felt proud of Iranian heroes while standing next to the symbol of Trump’s desperate and criminal act.

“I have pointed out time and again that if peace has been established in Afghanistan and Iraq and if Daesh’s terrorism has been defeated, more than anythying else, it is owed to the wisdom and courage of General Soleimani and the bravery and self-sacrifice of the people of those lands,” he noted.

The remarks came days after parts of an audiotape of a classified discussion between Zarif and economist Saeed Laylaz were leaked to so-called Iran International, a Saudi-funded news channel based in London.

During the leaked dialog, recorded on February 24 as part of an “oral history” project of the current administration, the foreign minister sounded critical of the primacy of what he called “the field” over “diplomacy” under the Iranian government.

While wishing diplomacy could play a bigger role in Iran’s foreign policy, Zarif, throughout the dialog, repeatedly hailed General Soleimani’s regional activities and underlined his close cooperation with him throughout years.

However, the comments led to a fierce debate within the country, with many questioning his stance regarding General Soleimani’s regional role.

“Reducing a theoretical debate on the relationship between the two wings of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s power abroad, namely diplomacy and the field, to a pretext for polarizing [Iran’s] upright servicemen and zealous diplomats, who strive for Iran’s dignity and glory, is not only short-sighted but in complete contradiction with views of this student of international relations (himself), who deems the field and diplomacy as synergistic and complementary,” Zarif wrote in his Instagram post.

Zarif explained that the key point he made during the leaked dialog was that Tehran should establish a clever relationship between the two wings of Iran’s foreign policy and determine its priorities under the instruction of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution.

He also mentioned that his friendship and cooperation with General Soleimani continued and deepened throughout more than two decades that he knew the general.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Zarif’s remarks should be analyzed holistically and not be cherry-picked.

The Islamic Republic’s stance cannot be represented through a selected segment of a talk, Khatibzadeh added.

Ali Rabiei, the Rouhani administration’s spokesman, said on Tuesday that the president has ordered the Intelligence Ministry to identify those behind the leakage.

“The audio file was released by a vengeful television network, which is funded by petrodollars and has been fervently supporting the sufferings and intimidation of the Iranian nation ever since it was established. This is indicative of the fact that the interview was broadcast conspiratorially and selectively,” Rabiei said.

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