Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jun. 20 Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that security would only take root in Iraq if United States-led troops left that country, the official news agency IRNA reported. Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Jun. 20 Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that security would only take root in Iraq if United States-led troops left that country, the official news agency IRNA reported.
Khamenei made the comments during a meeting with his top Iraqi protégé, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
The current security problems will only be resolved once the occupiers depart and the security issues are completely handed over to the Iraqi government and people, Khamenei said.
Hakim, a radical Shiite cleric, has been staying in Tehran for more than a week holding separate talks with top Iranian officials.
The SCIRI which was founded in Tehran in 1982 was the brainchild of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Irans current Supreme Leader Khamenei had originally been assigned to write the council’s manifesto.
Irans Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi was the groups chairman for several years after its founding while Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim was appointed as the groups spokesman. Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the elder brother of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, died in a deadly bomb blast in August 2003 in the Iraqi city of Najaf.
The group, which still maintains strong ties with Tehran and strongly backs greater Iranian presence in Iraq, has a military wing called the Badr Brigade.
