Cleric Blames US for Massacre of Shia Muslims in Pakistan

Tehran’s provisional Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati took the US responsible for the recent killings of Shiite Muslims in Pakistan, and said that Washington seeks to stir sectarian strife in the South Asian country.

The US agents provoke such attacks in order to spread division among the Islamic Ummah (community), Ayatollah Jannati said, addressing a large and fervent congregation of worshippers on Tehran University Campus on Friday.

Pakistani Shiites have come under increasing attacks in recent months. In a recent case, over 45 Shiites were killed in a terrorist attack on the Shiite Community in Karachi.

Elsewhere, Ayatollah Jannati pointed to the recent talks between Iran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and called on the group to accept Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

He welcomed the decrease in sanctions against Tehran, and noted that group has no way but to accept Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West’s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has dismissed West’s demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians’ national resolve to continue the path.