ISIL Not Powerful Enough to Pose Threat to Iran: Basij Commander
MASHHAD (Tasnim) – Commander of Iran's Basij (volunteer) Force Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi underlined that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group lacks the capability to pose any threat to the Iranian borders.
“The borders of the Islamic Republic of Iran are not threatened by the ISIL since they (terrorists) are not powerful enough to pose threat to our country’s borders,” Brigadier General Naqdi told the Tasnim News Agency on Wednesday.
He also emphasized that people dislike the ISIL due to the group's crimes.
"Therefore" Naqdi said "it will exist no longer."
Although the ISIL militants enjoy financial support and media coverage, the group will definitely be eliminated. the Iranian commander noted.
The ISIL, as a Takfiri group in Iraq and Syria, is believed to be supported by the West and some regional Arab countries.
The terrorist group claims as an independent state the territory of Iraq and Syria, with implied future claims intended over more of the Levant, including Lebanon, occupied Palestine, Jordan, Cyprus, and Southern Turkey.
The ISIL militants made swift advances in much of northern and western Iraq over the summer, after capturing large swaths of northern Syria.
However, a combination of concentrated attacks by the Iraqi military and the volunteer forces, who rushed to take arms after top Iraqi cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling for fight against the militants, have blunted the edge of the ISIL offensive.
