Apr. 6, 2014
The Western governments’ support for militants fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad has turned into a global threat, an academic writes in a column for the Press TV website.
“Continued support for foreign extremists and al-Qaeda affiliates is no longer simply a regional threat; it has become a global threat much greater than what existed in Afghanistan,” Professor Mohammad Marandi wrote on Sunday.
The academic also advised the Western governments to set aside their illusions about the overthrow of President Assad.
“It is clear that – as the Iranians were saying from the start – the Syrian government will not collapse and that the only way forward is for this reality to be acknowledged,” wrote Marandi.
He warned that taking side with one party in the ongoing conflict in Syria will result in “more death and destruction.”
Marandi said the international community has to “support an election where the Syrian people choose their own leadership.”
He said it has become clear that foreign-backed militants have been behind the crisis in Syria while “their regional and Western backers” persistently laid the blame on the Syrian government.
Marandi said the US and its allies initially assumed that the crisis in Syria was “more birth pangs of a new Middle East” or “or perhaps a dagger through the heart of the Islamic Republic” but now after innumerable deaths and unmentionable destruction they have come around to the views of Iran from the beginning.
Cities and towns across Syria have frequently come under mortar and rocket fire by foreign-sponsored militants since crisis erupted in the Arab country over three years ago.
The latest militant attacks on civilian areas come after the Syrian army liberated and purged a number of strategic areas interrupting major supply lines of the armed militants across the country.
Syria has been gripped by crisis since March 2011. President Assad has pledged that his country would strike terror “with an iron fist.”
