Senior Iranian commander Major General Qassem Soleimani hailed the significant role of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units in the liberation of Mosul from Daesh (ISIL), and said terrorist groups’ defeats in Iraq and elsewhere thwarted US and Israeli plots to “bring Iran to its knees.”
The US and Israel presumed that they could bring Iran to its knees by creating a current and an ideological army, commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Quds Force said in a gathering of IRGC personnel in Tehran on Tuesday, referring to the Daesh Takfiri group.
But they failed to implement their strategy in the region, he stressed.
Praising Iraqi religious authorities for initiating the formation of Popular Mobilization Units, also known as Hashd al-Shaabi, the general said the Iraqi Army managed to defeat the Takfiri forces after Hashd al-Shaabi units stepped in.
The senior commander then said that the enemies have hatched “very tough” plots against Iran in the region, and that regional conflicts have been aimed at overthrowing the Islamic Revolution.
Any defeat in the wars in Syria, Lebanon or Palestine would translate into a defeat for Iran, he said, adding that the axis of resistance has overcome the enemies in those conflicts by God’s grace.
Earlier this month, Iraq declared the complete liberation of Mosul some three years after the northern city fell to Daesh terrorists.
After eight months of difficult urban warfare, Iraqi military forces on June 29 captured the Mosul mosque at the heart of the strategic northern city, where Daesh had declared its de facto capital.
The recapture of Mosul, located some 400 kilometers north of Baghdad, marked the effective end of Daesh in the Arab country.
Daesh stronghold in Syria’s Raqqa is also close to falling.
Daesh militants made swift advances in northern and western Iraq over the summer of 2014, after capturing swaths of northern Syria.
Afterwards, a combination of concentrated attacks by the Iraqi military and the volunteer forces, who rushed to take arms after Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa calling for the fight against the militants, blunted the edge of Daesh offensive and forced the terrorist group withdraw from much of the areas it had occupied.
(TNA)
