This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani put forward his prescription for defeating the group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS), saying that local Iraqi and Syrian central government forces must be in the lead and that the United States was creating a new “terrorist group” by training and equipping members of the Free Syrian Army.
Speaking to a large audience of Americans and Iranian Americans in a New York City ballroom on Sept. 24, Rouhani did not reply when asked if he had heard President Barack Obama offer his own ideas for eradicating Islamic extremism in a major speech just hours earlier before the UN General Assembly.
US President Barack Obama spoke of the need for Muslim communities “to explicitly, forcefully and consistently reject the ideology of al-Qaeda and ISIL [another acronym for IS]” by accommodating “devout faith with a modern, multicultural world.” But Obama also said in relation to IS that “the only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.”
While there was a certain overlap in their views in terms of advocating political inclusiveness in Iraq and Syria, Rouhani suggested that the bombardment of IS in Syria by a US-led coalition might backfire and produce more terrorist organizations.
He specifically criticized the Obama administration for announcing that it would offer more training and arms to Syrian rebels to confront IS, which Rouhani referred to by its Arabic initials, Daesh.
“The American authorities have announced they wish to train another terrorist group to send them to Syria to fight,” Rouhani said. Asked by moderator Fareed Zakaria if he meant the Free Syrian Army, Rouhani said, “Call it what you like. … We must put the burden on the shoulder of the Syrian people, not make decisions for them and announce it to them.”
Airstrikes, he added, “may yield desired results in the short term but in the long term will only create tragedies.”
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