TEHRAN: In what appears to be a veiled reference to the Saudi-led military alliance, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq on Monday that the countries which had supported militant groups for a long time could not claim to fight them.
Without naming any specific country, the Iranian president said that the countries “supporting terrorist groups” such as the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the militant Islamic State group “financially and logistically for a long time cannot claim to be combating them”, according to a report carried by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.
Pakistan is part of the Saudi-led military coalition — the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT) — and a couple of days ago former army chief Gen Raheel Sharif left for Riyadh to assume the command of the 41-nation alliance.
While Iran suspects that under the garb of fighting terrorism the military alliance will intervene in Iraq and Syria and Saudi Arabia will also push the alliance into Yemen, Pakistan says that the coalition is focused on combating terrorism and it is neither for nor against any country.