Khamenei: U.S., Israel behind beheadings in Iraq
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suspects that U.S. and Israeli "agents" are behind the wave of kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq, the state news agency IRNA reported.
Khamenei, in a meeting with visiting Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, lashed out at the West's purport fight against terrorism and said that as a result, he preferred to see the Islamic republic do business with Asian countries.
"We seriously suspect the agents of the Americans and Israelis are conducting such horrendous terrorist moves, and cannot believe that the people who kidnap Filipino nationals, for instance, or behead U.S. nationals are Muslims." Khamenei said.
The U.S. "declared war on terrorism", he added, was merely a pattern of hypocrisy.
"In the early 1980s, Iran suffered terrorist attacks in which 72 prominent personalities were martyred on one occasion and a president and a prime minister on another," he said.
Khamenei added that the group, which was granted a base of operations in Iraq in former president Saddam Hussein era, were "now living freely under the protective umbrella of those Western countries that claim to be the standard bearers of the international campaign against terrorism."
Even though Iran is actively trading with the European Union, Khamenei asserted that the West's record of terrorism would make his country look east for business.
"Iran prefers to do business with Asian partners, rather than countries in other parts of the world," he told Goh, who is in Iran for five days and on the last leg of a tour that has already taken him to Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.
Also greeting the visiting premier was powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani -- now the head of Iran's top political arbitration body -- who accused the United States of a "two-faced" approach to terrorism.
"The double-faced and biased approach of the United States towards this ominous phenomenon is not only defeating efforts to fight it, but also escalating the problem," Rafsanjani complained.
And according to IRNA, Rafsanjani "pointed to the differences between terrorism and resistance" by raising the question of Palestinian armed resistance against Israeli occupation.
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