Zarif: Daesh not Over, US Relocating It

Local Editor

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif warned that the United States is regularly relocating Daesh [Arabic Acronym for the "ISIS"/ "ISIL"] terrorists to outside of the Middle East, where they had been based before losing all the territory they had occupied.

Zarif made the remarks during an event called the Patterns of Regional Order in the Post-Daesh Era at the Tehran University on Saturday.

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.

"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.

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.

"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 top Iranian diplomat also put forward an initiative for security in the region that includes dialog in the Gulf region.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team