Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani Declares End of Islamic State
Most of the forces battling ISIS have said they expect it to go underground and turn to guerrilla insurgency.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared the end of Islamic State, 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.
In an address broadcast live on state TV, Rouhani said:
Major General Qassem Soleimani, a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, also said Islamic State 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 Islamic State 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 Islamic State, where Soleimani was pictured by Iranian media last week.
Iraqi forces captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town there under Islamic State 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 Islamic State in Syria and Iraq have said they expect it to go underground and turn to guerrilla insurgency using sleeper cells and bombings.
The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states criticised Iran and its Lebanese Shi'ite ally Hezbollah at an emergency meeting in Cairo on Sunday, calling for a united front to counter Iranian interference.
Soleimani acknowledged the multinational force Iran has helped organise in the fight against Islamic State and thanked the "thousands of martyrs and wounded Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Afghan and Pakistani 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 Shi'ite volunteers, known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, who have fought Islamic State in Iraq.
On websites linked to the Guards, members of the organisation killed in Syria and Iraq are praised as protectors of Shi'ite holy sites and labelled "defenders of the shrine".
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 Sunni Muslim fighters of Islamic State, who see Shi'ites, the majority of Iran's population, as apostates.
Last month, US President Donald Trump gave the US 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.
(Published in an arrangement with Reuters.)
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