Mullah Rafsanjani: Iran Main Rival of U.S. in Region
May 1, 2004, 06:36
Tehran's substitute Friday Prayer Leader, Expediency Council Chairman mullah Rafsanjani, said on Friday that Iran is not a U.S. gendarme but rather Washington's main rival in the Middle East, adding that the Islamic Republic will not humiliate itself by serving the U.S. global arrogance.
Mullah Rafsanjani said that the Islamic Republic of Iran revealed the true picture of those who claim to be upholding democracy and seeking freedom, adding that Islam and the Islamic Revolution proved them wrong.
In reference to the current situation in Iraq, he raised the question of whether justice and reason allowed a military power to invade a country and use bombs weighing as much as one and a half tons to achieve its ends.
Turning to the disastrous situation in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, he said that if the objective was to defend the Iraqi people, the approach of foreign troops would have been different.
The Americans are at the gates of Najaf and they have already demonstrated that more often than not they use force, rather than their heads, thinking that by bulldozing a city people will give up.
"If the religious leadership of Najaf had not warned them, they would have done the same thing there that they did in Fallujah," he added, referring to the bloody three-week long U.S. Marine siege of a Sunni Muslim hotspot west of Baghdad in which hundreds of Iraqis and scores of Marines have been killed.
Mullah Rafsanjani said, "If we do not solve the Iraqi problem, it will become worse than the Palestinian problem and become a cancer in the region."
He praised the Spanish government for making the "reasonable" decision to withdraw its troops from Iraq.
http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_2204.shtml"Rafsanjani said that the Islamic Republic of Iran revealed the true picture of those who claim to be upholding democracy and seeking freedom, adding that Islam and the Islamic Revolution proved them wrong."
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