Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the United States is regularly relocating Daesh terrorists to outside of the Middle East, where they had been based before losing all the territory they had occupied.
“Their (the terrorists’) communication network remains in place, their leaders remain [alive or at large], and they still receive financial support; so we must expect the re-emergence of the threat any day,” the Iranian foreign minister warned.
“One of the West’s major mistakes is that they believe that Daesh is over,” he said. “[But] the conditions that created Daesh in the region are still present. Daesh is the birth child of the US invasion of Iraq and, before that, the Israeli oppression against the Palestinian people.”
The US transfer of the Daesh elements from the Syrian cities of Hasakah, Mayadin, and Dayr al-Zawr as well as other areas to outside the region “is a dangerous development that has had a regular pattern,” he said.
Zarif also stressed that although Daesh had been defeated territorially, its ideological and financial resources coming from the region and beyond had yet to be destroyed.
The top Iranian diplomat also put forward an initiative for security in the region that includes dialog in the Persian Gulf.
Daesh started offensives in Iraq and Syria in 2014, occupying territory in the two Arab countries and establishing a self-proclaimed “caliphate.” Soon, the Iraqi and Syrian armies — both receiving advisory military help from Iran — galvanized to retake Daesh-held territory.
The terrorist group was gradually stripped of all the land it had occupied in the two Arab countries.
Earlier this month, the Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan said that there were indications that the US military was allowing Daesh terrorists to infiltrate Afghanistan after their defeats in Syria and Iraq.
“It’s noteworthy that the extremists themselves and weapons for them, according to numerous witness accounts, are often transferred to the territory of Afghanistan by helicopters without identifying insignia,” Zamir Kabulov said.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei had earlier made the same warning.