Senior Cleric Warns of israel’s Plots to Disintegrate Regional Countries

Addressing a large and fervent congregation of the people on Tehran University campus on Friday, Hojjatoleslam Seddiqi said, “The Zionists, Britons and Americans are hatching plots to disintegrate Syria, Iraq and Yemen.”

He, meantime, called on the Arab countries to become united to prevent Israel and its allies from achieving their goals.

In relevant remarks earlier this month, Iranian First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri called on Iraqi officials and political groups to take firm stance against the US Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno’s remarks for the disintegration of Iraq.

Jahangiri made the remarks in a meeting with his Iraqi counterpart Nouri al-Maliki in Tehran and after General Odierno, who used to serve as the top US commander in Iraq, said last Wednesday that partitioning Iraq “is something that could happen and it might be the only solution”.

“All the Iraqi officials and political groups should adopt serious stances against these statements,” the Iranian first vice-president said in reaction to the statements made by Odierno and other western officials on partitioning Iraq.

He pointed to the Baghdad government’s ongoing war against the ISIL Takfiri terrorists, and said, “Safeguarding Iraq’s territorial integrity and national unity is of paramount importance that should receive due attention too.”

The Iraqi vice-president, for his part, pointed to the ineffectiveness of the US-led anti-ISIL Coalition to eradicate the Takfiri terrorist group, and said, “Despite the presence of some 40 to 50 countries in the anti-ISIL coalition, this terrorist group is easily selling crude reserves of Syria and Iraq, and this shows that one cannot be optimistic about the western countries’ determination for real fight against the ISIL.”

Maliki reiterated that some western countries are in favor of Iraq’s disintegration, and said, “They want the problems of Iraq to persist and they prefer Iraq’s partitioning to war against ISIL.”

The remarks came as a controversial US Congress bill, the draft of which was released in April, proposes the division of Iraq into three states and allows the Kurdish forces and the Sunni tribesmen to be armed directly without Baghdad’s approval.

The bill stipulates that 25 to 60 percent of the 715-million-dollar aid allegedly allocated to Iraq in its war against the ISIL will be directly supplied to the Sunni and Kurdish forces.

Iraqi politicians, including members of the parliament, as well as religious leaders have voiced their opposition to the bill.