In a statement on Thursday, Qassemi dismissed the annual report as lacking any credibility and said it is a futile attempt by Washington to deflect international attention from the United States’ role in creating, promoting and supporting terrorist groups in the world, especially in the Middle East.
He said the report, in fact, reflects grudging policies and contemptible attempts to use any issue as a tool to pursue this wrong policy.
“The report should, in principle and based on its pre-defined framework, discuss the situation of countries in fighting terrorism as well as the progress made in this regard; but as for Iran, the report denies the fact that the Islamic Republic has been at the forefront of the campaign against the most dangerous kind of terrorism in the region, something that the whole world admits,” said Qassemi.
“The report resorts to unrealistic and very preliminary approaches as well as the political contradictions which exist in a country, denies the clear and obvious facts and levels baseless accusations,” said the spokesman.
He said one of the reasons why the report is unfounded and lacks credibility is that countries have been introduced as US partners in the fight against terrorism that are among Washington’s allies in the region and have been the main ideological birthplaces of most major terrorist groups and currents in the world over the past two decades and continue backing terror groups.
This is clear to all people in the US, especially to American officials and media, and also to everyone in other parts of the world, Qassemi noted.
Numerous documents have proven that these countries have been involved in some of the most famous terror incidents across the world, he went on to say.
“This comes as, by the admission of many governments and international organizations, reports on Iran’s actions in fighting terrorism, including the imposition of triple international sanctions against terrorism, are not comparable with [the performance of] many of US allies in the region.”
Qassemi stressed that Iran has been a victim of terrorism over the past four decades and has lost more than 17 thousand of its citizens in the criminal acts committed by different terrorist groups.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to continue fighting terrorist groups and violent extremism as a global threat, and will stand by Iraqi and Syrian governments to fight ISIS and other terrorist groups as long as Baghdad and Damascus want it to,” the Iranian spokesman noted.
“Levelling false, biased and groundless accusations such as the ones mentioned in the recent report by the US State Department will have no bearing on this policy,” he said.
“We consider a world and a Middle East free from terrorism an attainable goal and believe that in order for that to happen, certain regional and trans-regional countries should stop their financial, ideological and military support for terrorist groups, the alleged military coalitions which are just a show should be dismantled, an alliance should be established among all states which are honest in the fight against terrorism, and there should be serious and honest determination in this regard.”
