Why isn’t IS a threat to Iran?

Reviewing new bulletins shown on TV channels for months, one will find that at least one third of them are about the Islamic State. This organization that has wealth up to $8 billion after invading Mosul is fully equipped with 4-wheel drive vehicles and spends thousands of dollars on its members every month.

It recruits followers from GCC and Arab states through Turkey and receives them with a grant of $2,500. According to Washington, this organization is only a threat but also ‘the real threat’. Its story will not be a short one. It is going to be a very long one because it takes many remarks to start thinking of this mysterious organization’s motives, targets and the consequences of its actions.

On significant remark is the statement made by the Iranian defence minister Hossein Dehghan that “IS does not pose any threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran”! So at a time when European countries, Jordan, GCC states, Iraq and in fact every country around the world agrees that this organization is a real menace and threat, Iran dares to feel assured about it, that too through its defence minister, which analytically reaffirms doubts about Iran’s funding to IS. Iran does not only fund and support Shiite movement as many may think.

It has also funded and supported Yazidi Houthis in Yemen, the Sunni Hamas, the Sunni Al- Qaeda and at the same time the Shiite Hezbollah. It also opposes Shiite parties that disagree with its policies, like the Shiites in Azerbaijan! The story about supporting IS may be true.

The second remark is that this organization has taken terrorism to its utmost levels and made Al-Qaeda’s terrorism ironically seem very ‘moderate’, according to some analysts, which is very ironic about the shifts of terrorism.

IS has taken terrorism to a level never reached by Al-Qaeda, which made the iconic clergy of the Salafist jihad group Abu Mohammed Al-Maqdesi accuse the organization of hyperbole.

IS also deemed Zawahiri an infidel, which makes before us a funny play where Al-Qaeda icons and followers are being accused of infidelity. This is a general remark denoting that we have not been successful enough in our war against terrorism and that the terrorism ‘virus’ has been evolving, developing according to stimuli found in extreme religious speeches found on various platforms.

The final remark is this organization has strong field management and full vision ready to head to Saudi Arabia as an ultimate dream we wish will not come true.

A dream that reflects the strategy it was knitted for. Wasn’t this very same organization patronized by Iran to fight the Syrian Free Army with support from the Syrian air forces and protection from the Syrian regime artillery? In other words, IS does not oppose one single policy of Iran’s. Its target is not Israel, it is Saudi Arabia.

So, after reviewing this agenda, do we still wonder in what womb was IS created and developed?! I place these remarks before my dear reader so that they contemplate about them and think about the questions I asked, adding them to the so many exclamations IS put in the minds and eyes of observers, creating more confusion and caution. IS is the result of chaos and a coronation of the deception dubbed as the ‘Arab Spring’. Woe is the fate of a nation that thinks that fire is cold and that autumn is a spring!

—Translated by Kuwait Times from Al-Jarida

By Torkey Al-Dekheil