A high-ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee has warned about the danger that Iran poses to US allies, like Israel, as it increases its political and military stranglehold on the Middle East.
On Monday, in front of a counterterrorism conference organized by the DC-based Hudson Institute, Republican Senator Tom Cotton said: “It’s a very dangerous advance that Iran is making through northern Iraq and southern Syria…For instance, Iran is now providing not just rockets; it’s helping to build precision-guided munitions factories in Syria, on the border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah can manufacture its own precision-guided munitions to use against Israel.”
This is, of course, incredibly worrying. The Iranian Regime has long dreamed of controlling the Middle East and creating a so-called Shia crescent stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and, as such, controlling other nation states through proxy terror groups and its own Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
The Arkansas Senator said: “We can’t allow that to happen. We can’t allow the IRGC to have, unmolested, resupply lines going from Iran into the Levant. Unfortunately, Iran has the power of nation-state behind a revolutionary cause. You see it in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen and on the seas.”
He concluded: “It’s not in the interest of the United States to have a revolutionary cause backed with the powers of a nation state expanding its influence throughout the region.”
Also speaking at the Hudson Institute event was former defence secretary Leon Panetta who also emphasised the importance of confronting Iranian influence.
Panetta, who served under President Barack Obama, said: “Iran provides support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and other elements of disruption in the Middle East. There is a triangle between Damascus and Tehran and Baghdad.”
He recommended that the US form a regional coalition with moderate Arab countries to confront threats posed by Iran and terrorism as a whole, noting that he’d made the recommendation whilst in office but it didn’t go very far.
He said: “We have to develop a Middle East coalition of countries that can work in cohesion.”
The coalition would have a joint military command and be able to combine resources in the fight against terrorism.
Meanwhile, the Iranian Regime has threatened European nations against siding with the US in matters relating to the Iranian military, their support of terrorism, or their missile programmes.
Sadeq Amoli Larijani, the head of the Islamic Republic’s judiciary, said: “The Europeans should realize that if they want to follow the US and interfere in our defence affairs, we will stand against them as we did against the US…“Iran’s missile program is for defence and non-negotiable.”
Of course, this relates to the US’s recent decertification of Iranian compliance in the 2015 nuclear deal.
Ultimately, European leaders will have to ask whether they want to stand with the US or with a Regime which is the world leader in sponsorship of terrorism.
Source » ncr-iran