Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani refuted on Friday the allegation by officials of some regional countries that Iran is after establishing "an empire" in the Middle East, stressing such a policy runs counter to Islamic thinking.
"We staged the Islamic Revolution to shake off the domination (of the Pahlavi regime)," he said, underlining the wrongness of the assumption while the era of empires has come to an end, IRNA reported. He highlighted the significance of Muslim nations' wisdom in the current situation that "darkness" is prevalent in some parts of the Islamic world and Muslim nations are affected by conflicts.
"Takfiri groups, in the name of Islam, kill Muslims, and world powers are seeing to impose modern forms of exploitation on Muslim countries," noted the speaker. A takfiri is a Muslim who accuses followers of other faiths and some Islamic sects of being unbelievers. "The exploiters deprive Islamic countries of their own resources and instead provide them with a bunch of second-hand arms so that they kill one another," the senior lawmaker lamented.
He censured some countries in the region for trying to justify the killing of Muslims under the pretext that they have "security" reasons to do so, noting that nobody has the right to destroy other countries by resorting to such false excuses.
Islam regards all its followers to be brothers, he said, expressing surprise why the brotherly states are afraid of one another. Addressing authorities of some regional states, he asked, "Why are you afraid of Iran?" saying that Iran has never sought to attack other countries during the 36 years after the Islamic Revolution.
"If Iran is a powerful country, it aims to use its power to defend Muslim nations, not against them," he stated, pointing to the fact that whenever asked, the Islamic Republic has lent its support to the defenseless people of Palestine, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq.
On the sanctions imposed on Iran by the West, Larijani said although the Islamic Republic has reiterated many times that it only seeks to access nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes, the West tends to ignore the pledge.
"The government took the international negotiations (over Iran's nuclear dispute) seriously and reached some agreement with the major powers over some principles," he said, denouncing some negotiating parties for makeing excessive demands outside the framework of international regulations. He emphasized that the nation insists on preserving its interests and warned the West that it cannot impose new restrictions on Iran in the course of nuclear talks.
