Tehran, February 27 (RHC)-- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has underscored a confession by U.S. President Donald Trump that the Islamic Republic hates the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, and that the presence of American forces in Syria was for plundering the Arab country's oil resources.
Zarif made the remarks in a tweet accompanied by a video clip that showed Trump making a confession about the U.S. troops withdrawal after they "have taken the oil" in Syria. Trump has on several occasions publicly pointed to stealing Syria’s oil reserves.
In October last year, after ordering the withdrawal of American forces from Syria, Trump said he wanted the U.S. firm ExxonMobil to go to the Arab country to tap its oil. The U.S. president also boasted in the footage about his country's purported fight against the Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group and urged Tehran to fight the Takfiri outfit as "Iran hates ISIS."
In a post on his Twitter account, Zarif said: "Trump just admitted what we all knew: U.S. troops in Syria to "have the oil”" adding that, "Russia, Syria, & Iran can fight ISIS, confessing, “Iran hates ISIS.”"
Denouncing the U.S. assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad last month, the top Iranian diplomat censured the so-called US counterterrorism efforts, and said Washington, instead of fighting against Daesh, "cowardly murdered" the terrorist group's number-one enemy.
On January 3, a drone strike, conducted by direct order of Trump, martyred Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), known as Hashed al-Sha’abi in Arabic, and their companions outside Baghdad International Airport.
Soon after General Soleimani’s assassination, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said Washington was to face a “harsh revenge” for the atrocity. On January 8, the IRGC unleashed volleys of ballistic missiles at the American military airbase of Ain al-Assad in Iraq’s Anbar Province, which housed US forces. The Leader later described the retaliatory strikes as “only a slap.”
The U.S. assassination of the top Iranian commander sent shock waves across the world while, at the same time, forging greater unity in the region against Washington's interventionism.
Iraqi lawmakers also took action by unanimously approving a bill, demanding the withdrawal of all foreign military forces led by the United States from the country.
