{"id":2158,"date":"2016-11-27T08:51:52","date_gmt":"2016-11-27T05:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arabiangcis.org\/english\/?p=2158"},"modified":"2016-11-27T08:51:52","modified_gmt":"2016-11-27T05:51:52","slug":"how-tehran-uses-isil-to-get-close-to-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/monitoring-and-translation\/articles\/how-tehran-uses-isil-to-get-close-to-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"How Tehran uses ISIL to get close to Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran created a bogeyman called ISIL, or at least has had a hand in making it. Now Iran is proposing itself as the only country, which can help to get rid of it.<\/strong>
\nI formerly proposed that ISIL and Tehran chant empty slogans against each other\u2014each one claiming to fight the other. However, when we go beyond these allegations and slogans, we see that ISIL has offered invaluable assistance for Iran\u2019s destructive expansionist plans in the region. Perhaps the best example and evidence for this is what is happening in Sunni regions of Iraq in particular.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this article, I will try to show the way in which ISIL has provided valuable services not only to Iran but also to the West, including the United States. Looking at the Iranian regime\u2019s stance towards the Syrian revolution in Syria, we see that the establishment in Tehran and its supporters and followers depicted the Syrian revolution as a \u201cZio-American conspiracy\u201d\u2014a plot targeting the self-proclaimed \u2018Axis of Resistance\u2019 over its alleged defense of its borders against Israel. This stance, however, suddenly changed following the interim agreement on Iran\u2019s nuclear deal reached between the Iranian regime and the 5+1 group in Geneva in 2013.
\nSince then, Iran\u2019s narrative on Syria has changed to one of Syria being targeted by terrorism, with Iran being an essential ally in the regime\u2019s efforts to block and fight this terror threat. More precisely, Iran began deploying a more Western-friendly War on Terror narrative, talking about \u201cglobal terrorism,\u201d instead of putting the blame on \u201carrogant powers\u201d and \u201cZio-American\u201d conspiracies. Tehran\u2019s recent claims more closely echoed the superpowers\u2019 concerns \u2014 particularly those of the United States \u2014 over the current issues in the region. To serve its geopolitical interests, Tehran has not hesitated to spread false accusations against the Sunni countries of the region \u2013especially Saudi Arabia\u2014claiming that they support and stand behind ISIL.
\nMoreover, it is not surprising that Iranian media enthusiastically support and fuel such claims, given that they are essentially organs of the regime at the service of its plans, and reflecting its pragmatism when its interests and narrative change.
\nNevertheless, it is horrifying when such slanderous claims are not only widely repeated but are given wholly unmerited credibility through further repetition by Western media and think tanks – think tanks, which are themselves in the hands of a group of Iranian lobbyists in the USA who had, ironically, fled Iran due to the regime\u2019s great injustice and the limitations it imposed on them and succeeded in obtaining U.S. citizenship.
\nOne such lobbying group, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), recently sent a 42-page report to President-elect Donald Trump. This report — signed by more than 60 carefully selected experts\u2014was published under the title \u2018Maximizing the Opening with Iran: How President Trump Can Secure American Interests in the Middle East.’
\nHaving studied this report thoroughly and scrupulously, I found that many of the claims it makes are questionable in the extreme, and may return to analyze these in a future article. In the meantime, however, the most important issue to focus on is why seven whole sections of the eight-part report prepared by Iranian regime lobbyists deal with the need for cooperation between Washington and Tehran to eliminate \u2018ISIL.’ The report also noted some regions of the world where ISIL has been inactive to date, asserting that U.S.-Iranian cooperation is essential to prevent the group from penetrating these areas.
\nIn fact, the NIAC has omitted one very vital fact from its supposedly exhaustive report, which effectively exposes its ludicrous claims and shows up its efforts to make Trump\u2019s policies more closely resemble the regime-friendly policies of Obama; the CIA lists Iran as the primary global sponsor of terror. Indeed this status is the reason for the US imposing sanctions on the country. ISIL cannot be considered realistically a serious threat to Iran and its interests in the region; indeed, it has offered the Iranian regime a pretext and done it a service in ways that the IRGC could only dream of. Al-Baghdadi has been far more invaluable to the Iranian regime\u2019s expansionist regional objectives than Qassem Suleimani ever could be.
\nHowever, instead of giving priority to serving Iranian immigrants in the U.S., the NIAC follows and supports the Jurist Leadership\u2019s regime, with NIAC members who have U.S. citizenship preferring to serve the Iranian regime\u2019s interests over those of the USA.
\nThe Iranian regime\u2019s and its lobbyists\u2019 insistence on claiming that Washington and Tehran should merge their anti-terror efforts raises more questions than answers, over the regime\u2019s real relationship with ISIL, and its leveraging of its supposed opposition to the group as a means of improving the regime\u2019s image in the West and of justifying occupation and war under the pretext of \u201ccooperation with the West to combat ISIL.\u201d
\nIran made a bogeyman called ISIL, or at least had a hand in making it. Now is the time for Iran to propose itself as the only country, which can help all get rid of ISIL. To put it concisely, based on what was said, it is evident that Iran starts a fire in the region, but in the next step, it will introduce itself as the only one that can put it out!<\/p>\n

\n

Opinions in this article reflect the writer\u2019s point of view, not necessarily the view of The Arabain GCIS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iran created a bogeyman called ISIL, or at least has had a hand in making it. Now Iran is proposing itself as the only country, which can help to get rid of it. I formerly proposed that ISIL and Tehran chant empty slogans against each other\u2014each one claiming to fight the other. However, when we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":2159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1208,1211,1206,1209,1210,351,1147,361,722,1168,944,83,28,1150,624,412,295,1207],"class_list":["post-2158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-51-group","tag-arrogant-powers","tag-expansionist","tag-geneva","tag-global-terrorism","tag-iraq","tag-isil","tag-media","tag-middle-east","tag-niac","tag-sunni","tag-syria","tag-tehran","tag-terror","tag-u-s","tag-washington","tag-west","tag-zio-american"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2158"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2162,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions\/2162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}