Iran leader says Iraq embodies U.S. defeat in Mideast

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Feb. 27 – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Iraq was the “embodiment” of America’s political defeat in the Middle East as he accused the United States of being behind the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Feb. 27 – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Iraq was the “embodiment” of America’s political defeat in the Middle East as he accused the United States of being behind the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra.

“The Americans are trying to instigate a sectarian and religious war in Iraq, and the cataclysmic event in Samarra is a case in point”, Iran’s state-run television quoted the ayatollah as saying.

The theocratic regime’s Supreme Leader defined U.S. objectives in Iraq as “creation of division and insecurity, and an effort to paint the popularly-elected government of Iraq as incompetent”. He was referring to the outgoing government dominated by Shiite figures with close ties to the Islamic Republic.

Khamenei made his remarks in a meeting with Iran’s Interior Minister Hojjatoleslam Mostafa Pour-Mohammad and provincial governors, the television reported.

“Today, the Iraqi government is the embodiment of the defeat of America’s policies in the Middle East, because America was trying to set up a government that would support it, but now an Islamist government has been formed that follows the views of the Marjaya [the supreme Shiite religious authorities”>. For this reason, the Americans are trying to hamper the work of this government, but with the vigilance of the people and officials of Iraq, their plots will fail”, Khamenei said.

On Wednesday, a massive bomb destroyed the golden dome of the shrine marking the resting place of two Shiite Imams. It sparked off attacks on dozen of Sunni mosques that left behind more than 120 people dead.

Last week, Iran’s Supreme Leader blamed the “intelligence agencies of the occupiers of Iraq and the Zionists” for carrying out the attack.

Iranian-backed Shiite clerics in Iraq and Lebanon repeated Khamenei’s charges that the United States was behind the attacks. Abdul-Aziz Hakim, the Iranian-backed leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, blamed the United States for the bombing. Many Sunni and secular leaders in Iraq believe Iran played a role in the attack to abort the creation of a national unity government that it saw as a threat to its interests.