West Seeks Own Benefits in Fighting ISIL, Says Abdollahian

A senior Iranian diplomat says Western countries, including the US, seek their own benefits in the so-called campaign against ISIL terrorists.

 “The West and the US fight ISIL and terrorists to [secure] their own interests,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the deputy foreign minister for Arab and African Affairs, said in a televised interview with IRIB on Thursday night.

Iran has time and again warned the US and Western countries, both implicitly and explicitly, about the ISIL threats and the growing presence of terrorists in the sensitive Middle East region, he said.

The Iranian diplomat stressed that the US “follows double standards” in the fight against ISIL, saying Washington did not take action against the group when it started its terrorist activities in Syria, but rather supported the militants blatantly.

 “Unless the US and the West adopt a clear approach to fighting terrorism, these terrorist groups will continue their operations,” Amir-Abdollahian said.

He said the ISIL terrorist group initially constituted a crisis to the Middle East, but now it has turned into a global threat.

Since late September, the US, along with some of its Arab allies, has been conducting airstrikes against the ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Syrian government or a UN mandate. The US had already begun an aerial bombing campaign against the Takfiri terrorists in Iraq in August.

The ISIL terrorists have been committing heinous crimes in the captured areas, including mass executions and beheading of local residents as well as foreign nationals.

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