Takfiris' Fate to Be Similar to Saddam Hussein's: Iranian Official
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani condemned the terrorist activities of Takfiri (extremist) groups in the region, saying that they will have the same destiny as that of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Today, Saddam and his supporters, who were disgracefully forced to withdraw from (Iran's southwestern city of) Khorramshahr (in the 1980s), not only are not in Iraq anymore but have been wiped off the face of the earth, Shamkhani said in a speech in Tehran on Monday.
He was speaking at a ceremony to commemorate the anniversary of liberation of Khorramshahr, which had been occupied by Iraq's Baathist army in the early 1980s and was recaptured by the Iranian armed forces on May 24, 1982.
The Iranian official emphasized that Takfiri groups would have a fate similar to that of Saddam Hussein.
He was referring to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a Takfiri group that has been committing heinous crimes in Iraq and Syria.
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 last 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.
