Iranian president declares end of IS militant group

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared the end of IS on Tuesday while a senior military commander thanked the "thousands of martyrs" killed in operations organised by Iran to defeat the militant group in Syria and Iraq.

"Today with God's guidance and the resistance of people in the region we can say that this evil has either been lifted from the head of the people or has been reduced," Rouhani said in an address broadcast live on state TV.

"Of course the remnants will continue but the foundation and roots have been destroyed."

Major General Qassem Soleimani, a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, also said IS had been defeated, in a message sent on Tuesday to Iran's supreme leader which was published on the Guards' news site, Sepah News.

Iranian media have often carried video and pictures of Soleimani, who commands the Quds Force, the branch of the Guards responsible for operations outside Iran, at frontline positions in battles against IS in Iraq and Syria.

The Revolutionary Guards, a powerful military force which also oversees an economic empire worth billions of dollars, has been fighting in support of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad and the central government in Baghdad for several years.

More than a thousand members of the Guards, including senior commanders, have been killed in Syria and Iraq.

The Syrian conflict has entered a new phase with the capture at the weekend by government forces and their allies of Albu Kamal, the last significant town in Syria held by IS, where Soleimani was pictured by Iranian media last week.

Iraqi forces captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town there under IS control, on Friday, signalling the collapse of the so-called caliphate it proclaimed in 2014 across vast swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory.

Most of the forces battling IS in Syria and Iraq have said they expect it to go underground and turn to a guerrilla insurgency using sleeper cells and bombings.

In his address on Tuesday, Rouhani accused the United States and Israel of supporting IS. He also criticized powers in the region and asked why they had not spoken out about civilian deaths in Yemen's conflict.

Soleimani acknowledged the multinational force Iran has helped organise in the fight against IS and thanked the "thousands of martyrs and wounded defenders of the shrine".

He pointed to the "decisive role" played by Hezbollah and the group's leader Seyed Hassan Nasrallah and highlighted the thousands of Iraqi volunteers, known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, who have fought IS in Iraq.

On websites linked to the Guards, members of the organization killed in Syria and Iraq are praised as protectors of holy sites and labelled "defenders of the shrine".

Rouhani is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan in Russia on Wednesday to discuss the Syria conflict.

The Revolutionary Guards initially kept quiet about their military role in both Syria and Iraq but have become more outspoken about it as casualties have mounted. They frame their engagement as an existential struggle against the militants of IS.

Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump gave the U.S. Treasury Department authority to impose economic sanctions on Guards members in response to what Washington calls its efforts to destabilise and undermine its opponents in the Middle East

Source : Times of oman