By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says the United States is at war with Islam, Iran, and Shiite Muslims.
In his words, “Corrupt Takfiri groups committing the worst and most heinous crimes in the name of Islam are being supported by Western powers. They have formed an anti-ISIL coalition on the surface but are in fact the sponsors of this current and in line with their war with Islam. They are referring to the group as the ‘Islamic State’ in order to tarnish Islam’s image.”
Ayatollah Khamenei goes on to state that the War Party in Washington and its allies are opposed to Iran as a regional powerhouse. He couldn’t be more accurate:
1. Iran stands at the center of U.S. ambitions in the Middle East and Eurasia. With its growing influence, Iran is the crucial link in the formation of a new Asian energy security grid. That explains why Ayatollah Khamenei says Washington and its allies are doing everything to keep Iran out of any transnational oil and gas pipeline deal.
2. Iran has the second largest oil and gas reserves in the world after Russia, and it refuses to be a U.S. vassal. Its growing influence on the Western Front is more to do with America’s support for corrupt and hated regimes and its ill-fated wars on Iraq, Yemen and Syria, than it has to do with any active Iranian hostility, threat or intervention.
3. On the Eastern Front, it is geopolitical circumstances that dictate Iran’s geo-strategic importance. The rapidly emerging economies of China and India and their growing energy needs in a world with finite and depleting energy reserves have been the forcing house for a new alliance of oil exporting and importing nations in central and eastern Asia.
4. As regional powers strengthen ties in this key energy market, they are also looking to China, and away from the West. Washington is desperate to stop this. The problem is Washington cannot supply oil and gas. India and Pakistan, despite U.S. pressure, have refused to renege on the pipeline deal. With China on board, they are determined to complete the construction of the pipeline. The Iranian stretch is finished and Russia has announced its willingness to support the venture with technology.
5. The South Pars gas fields – the largest in the world – are shared by Iran and Qatar. The key unstated reason for Qatar to be so obsessed by regime change in Syria is to kill the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, agreed upon in 2011. The same applies to Turkey, because this pipeline would bypass Ankara, which always bills itself as the key energy crossroads between East and West. No wonder, it has opened a “Jihadist Highway”, busy training ISIL militants on its soil!
Washington is counting on its allies Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey to sabotage the deal. The war is specifically designed to destroy Syria’s oil and gas infrastructures and stop it from becoming an energy hub connected to the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.
Altogether, understanding the real reasons behind the sinister hostility and primary sanctions against Iran will help us understand better why the American interventionists and regional cohorts refuse to normalize ties with Iran; end the ongoing war on Syria, and plan for a prosperous and peaceful regional future.
Source: http://kayhan.ir/en
