Rifts Used to Create Insecurity

The chairman of the Expediency Council says “colonial powers” and “authoritarian regimes” use sectarian rifts to create insecurity in the region. “Unfortunately, dictatorships, colonialism and terrorism provoke the people to create insecurity by using (their) sectarian and religious differences,” Press TV quoted Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying in a Monday meeting with UN special envoy for Iraq Nikolay Mladenov in Tehran. He pointed to the role of “authoritarianism” and “colonialism” in the creation of terrorism and noted, “As long as these two factors exist, terrorists are present and they even grow more in such an environment.”  The veteran politician said countering terrorism requires a comprehensive plan and taking heed of all political and social strata, adding, “The presence of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq is not permanent, but planning is needed to prevent the infiltration of this ideology and similar deviant thought.”