Spokeswoman: New Wave of Terrorism in Iraq Vindicates Iran’s Earlier Warnings

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham expressed concern over the volatile situation in Iraq, and said the spread of terrorism in the Arab country vindicates Tehran’s previous warnings.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran had earlier warned that the danger of terrorism won’t be limited to one region and will spread beyond countries and unfortunately today we are witnessing this issue,” Afkham said in her weekly press conference in Tehran on Wednesday.

She urged immediate stop in support for the terrorist groups by certain states, and called on all countries to adopt collective measures to fight terrorism.

Expressing concern about the recent terrorist activities of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) and the Iraqi army’s efforts to confront them, Afkham said, “The Iraqi army and police have been able to confront the Takfiri and terrorist forces, and strengthening Iraq’s national unity will further help them.”

Asked by reporters if Iraq has asked Iran for military assistance to fight the ISIL terrorists, she said “such a demand has not been made until this moment”, reiterating that Iraq can repel the threat by itself.

Reports from Iraq said today that the ISIL seized several areas in Iraq’s Kirkuk and Salaheddin provinces after the militants took control of a whole province to its West.

It came after ISIL seized control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and the surrounding province of Nineveh earlier on Tuesday.

Nineveh, long a militant stronghold and one of the most dangerous areas in Iraq, shares a border with part of Western Kirkuk province, which is located North of Baghdad.

Iranian officials have on many occasions warned of the danger of the spread of terrorism and extremism to different regional states.

On December 18, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to approve Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s ‘World Against Violence and Extremism (WAVE)’ proposal, which calls on all nations across the globe to denounce violence and extremism. The Iranian president had made the proposal in his address to the UN Disarmament Conference in New York on September 25.

Under the UN resolution adopted in accordance with the WAVE proposal, the General Assembly would urge member states to take “appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace and to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character”.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a meeting with Rouhani in Beijing in May voiced the world body’s preparedness to cooperate with Iran to help eradicate extremism in the world.

“The UN is ready to cooperate with Iran and other countries to eradicate violence and extremism in the world,” Ban said during the meeting on the sidelines of the Fourth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in the Chinese capital.

Ban hailed the Iranian president’s WAVE proposal, and lamented that the world is suffering from extremism and violence as acute problems.

“Today extremism and violence have resulted in global instability.”