Iran’s Supreme Leader Imam Ali Khamenei has spoken about America’s role in funding global Salafist terrorism in a speech in Tehran. He highlighted the main points of his speech in the following series of Tweets,
That US arms a terrorist group is what causes instability. Who created #ISIS? The US!
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 12, 2017
That the US joined the anti-ISIS coalition is a lie. They're against an unrestrained ISIS but agree with a controlled ٍٍٍ#ISIS.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 12, 2017
US president accuses Iran of terrorism, while terrorism in this region has American roots.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 12, 2017
In another Tweet he took a swipe at America’s hypocrisy for claiming to support democracy while maintaining a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, possibly the least democratic country in the world.
US talks w/Saudi medieval regime, a stigma that won't be cleaned off US, on human rights of Iran–a country which is symbol of democracy!
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 12, 2017
During recently aired footage of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interviews with US film-maker Oliver Stone, Putin explained the historical relationship between America and Saslafist terrorism, including al-Qaeda. Putin traced the roots of US sponsorship of such groups to the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and to the struggle against Salafists in Chechnya which became most apparent in the 1909s and into the early 2000s.
Putin said to Stone,
“Al-Qaeda is not the result of our activities. This is the result of activities of our US friends. This all started in the times of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, when the US security services supported different movements of Islamic fundamentalism in their struggle against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The
US side has nurtured both Al-Qaeda and bin Laden”.
Putin continued,
“It always happens like this. Our US partners should have been aware of it. It is their fault”.
Putin then explained to Stone how the US sided with and actively aided terrorist in Chechnya saying,
“If we speak about a political support (by the US for terrorist in Chechnya), there is no need in proving evidence. It has been done publicly, openly. And if we speak about urgent financial support – we have such evidence and furthermore have already provided it to our US colleagues”.
Putin then stated that he made his grievances known at the time to the then US President George W. Bush. According to Putin, Bush said that he would “work on it” but that the deep state, the CIA in particular did not change its policy of funding terrorists inside the Russian Federation even when the issue was brought up by the Russian President.
Putin stated,
“Indeed, we have later received via our partner links a letter from the US CIA, which said that our colleagues consider that they have a right to maintain relations with all the representatives of the opposition and would continue to do so. It was obvious that it was not only about opposition groups, but about terrorist groups and organisations”.
The Russian President explained to the alt-film maker that the US strategy is plagued by short term thinking. Putin said,
“I think that it is a wrong policy exactly because such understanding of relations with Russia is not aimed at future. People, who think like that, do not see further than 25-50 years ahead”.
He continued,
“In such a situation, a man or a country begins to make mistakes… The state begins to function ineffectively. One mistake follows another. That is the trap in which, as I believe, the United States got caught into”.
Both the Russian President and Iran’s Supreme Leader are speaking truths which are well documented and frequently discussed throughout the world although the issues are never touched by the western mainstream media. Donald Trump himself called Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the “founders of ISIS”, a statement which tends to corroborate the remarks made by Putin and Khamenei, but Trump’s understanding of this issue has not changed the overall thinking of the US deep state and the related military-industrial complex.
Under Barack Obama, the US seemed unable to come to terms with its own decline. Recently, a prominent member of the Trump administration, Defence Secretary James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis penned an official letter to the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee where he spoke of the super-power status of Russia and China threatening hegemonic US military dominance that in the 1990s and for much of the 2000s, America took for granted.
Mattis wrote,
“Our command of the seas is threatened by long-range, land-based guided munitions battle networks designed to attack our ships at increasingly longer ranges. Our undersea superiority, unquestioned since the end of the Cold War, and a key competitive advantage, is challenged by both Russia and China”.
Mattis went on to characterise this new reality in the following way,
“A return to great power competition, marked by a resurgent and more aggressive Russian Federation and a rising, more confident, and assertive China, places the international order under assault”.
The truth of the matter is that a state’s strength is not a threat in and of itself. A threat is better understood as related to how a country uses its power. In the case of the United States, both Iran’s Supreme Leader and Russia’s President have accurately described why US hegemonic power is dangerous. Declining US power is perhaps executed in a manner that is even even more zealous as was proved during the war filled Obama years.
If only the US was actually interested in fighting terrorism, the US would be celebrating the rise of China and Russia as valuable partners against a common threat. But one doesn’t fight a threat by funding it. The latter scenario however, is that which America has long ago embarked on and there are no immediate signs that this is to change any time soon.
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