Kissinger Warns Trump: Defeating Daesh Could Lead to Iranian Empire

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger has warned the Trump administration that Iran should not be allowed to fill the power vacuum that will be created when the Daesh (ISIL or ISIS) terrorist group is defeated.

 “In these circumstances, the traditional adage that the enemy of your enemy can be regarded as your friend no longer applies. In the contemporary Middle East, the enemy of your enemy may also be your enemy. The Middle East affects the world by the volatility of its ideologies as much as by its specific actions,” he wrote in an article last week for CapX, News Week reported.

“The outside world’s war with ISIS can serve as an illustration. Most non-ISIS powers—including Shiite Iran and the leading Sunni states—agree on the need to destroy it. But which entity is supposed to inherit its territory? A coalition of Sunnis? Or a sphere of influence dominated by Iran?

“The answer is elusive because Russia and the NATO countries support opposing factions. If the ISIS territory is occupied by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or Shiite forces trained and directed by it, the result could be a territorial belt reaching from Tehran to Beirut, which could mark the emergence of an Iranian radical empire,” he wrote.

The statement by Kissinger came as in Iraq, Baghdad's forces have liberated the northern city of Mosul from the terror group and are close to ousting Daesh from all of its population centers. In Syria, Syrian and Kurdish forces have recaptured almost half of the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, which became the de facto ISIS capital after the militant group rose to prominence in mid-2014.

The United States launched a campaign of airstrikes against Daesh in August 2014 after the terrorist group overran the key Iraqi city of Mosul and parts of the country's north and west.

The US-led coalition of 68 nations has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be the positions of Daesh terrorists inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

That is while Iran and Syria are accusing the US of supporting Daesh. In a recent move to support the terrorist group, the US military forces attacked a military base captured by Hashid al-Shaabi forces near al-Tanf, an area on Iraq-Syria border.

According to reports, 47 forces were killed in the US strike by artillery fire and smart bombs on Monday.

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

(First published on August, 09, 2017)