Iran Focus
London, 28 Jul – Three retired U.S. generals and a retired U.S. Colonel have taken part in a round table discussion on the Iran’s role in the crises that have engulfed the Middle East.
The panelists were: Gen. James Conway, former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps; Air Force General Chuck Wald, former Deputy Commander of U.S. European Command; Brig. General David Phillips, former Chief of Military Police; and U.S. Army Col. Wesley Martin, the senior anti-terrorism officer in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 and the senior operations officer for detention operations in Iraq from 2005 to 2006.
Iran is “hotly engaged” in the civil war in Syria, sponsoring militias such as Lebanese Hezbollah and sending their own troops to join the fight to keep dictator Bashar al-Assad in power, said Gen. Conway.
“The world is not a safer place” with Iran’s involvement in the region, he said, adding that some 70,000 Iranian troops and proxy militias were creating “havoc” across the Middle East.
Gen. Wald said: “Iran’s ultimate goal is to be the regional hegemon. … As a subset of that, they like to foment problems.”
“I think that the leadership of Iran – the mullahs – are the primary problem” in the Middle East, he said, adding that Tehran has been sponsoring Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and the Assad regime in Syria.
Col. Martin said that Iran’s malign influence in the region and in particular its policies to exterminate the Sunni population in Iraq led to the rise of ISIS (ISIL or Daesh).
Brig. Gen. Phillips highlighted the role that Iran’s women play in combatting the fundamentalism espoused by the Iranian regime. He pointed out the main Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), is led by women who pose a “threat” to the theocratic regime.
The full interview, which was conducted by the ‘Alliance for Public Awareness – Iranian Communities in Europe’ on the sidelines of the Iranian opposition’s 9 July “Free Iran” convention in Paris, can be watched HERE.
