Thursday, April 24, 2008

Iran backs Iraq’s crackdown on ‘armed groups’


Tehran Times

Contributed by Anders

"KUWAIT CITY (AFP) -- Iran said on Tuesday that it backs the Iraqi government’s crackdown on armed groups and denied accusations of assisting militias in the war-battered nation.

“There are armed groups in Iraq. A firm measure must be applied to disarm all these groups, without any exception,” Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki told a press conference in Kuwait.
“Weapons should be only in the hands of the Iraqi army [which is made up mostly of the Iran-formed, armed and trained Badr Brigade],” said Mottaki, who took part in a key conference of foreign ministers of Iraq’s neighbors and Western powers.

Iraqi security forces have launched a crackdown against the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the southern oil city of Basra and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki vowed to disarm all illegal groups.

Mottaki denied accusations that Shiite Iran was assisting Shiite militias in Basra and interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs.

“The ones who should be blamed are the foreign forces in Iraq,” he said.

The Islamic Republic of Iran provides the strongest support to the Iraqi government and the political process and thus it is illogical to accuse us of supporting terrorist groups there,” Mottaki said. "

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Iran is trying so hard to please the Great Satan at the expense of the Iraqis. I think that Iran is trying to be too clever and to have its cake and eat it too. How can it so openly support a most corrupt puppet government installed and kept in power by the US occupation and which has no political legitimacy or support among Iraqis?

This relationship with the Great Satan has become so scandalous, that Iran can't just gloss over it. How can Iran support Hizbullah in Lebanon which fought the Israeli occupation while supporting the US occupation in Iraq by supporting the Maliki puppet?

How about some principles and consistency, Tehran? Is this too much to ask? I think that by this crooked policy Iran will lose a lot of support among Arabs, including ordinary Iraqis. What kind of Islamic "revolution" is this that keeps corrupt US lackeys in power, at the expense of the Iraqi people? And Tehran supports the US and British bombing of Basra and Sadr City which has killed thousands already?? What is going on here??

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