Iran's religious extremism paved the way for ISIS, British peer says

                           

The religious dictatorship in Iran and its puppet allies in Syria and Iraq have paved the way for the creation of the extremist terrorist group ISIS (ISIL), a leading British peer has declared.

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass said the West was wrong to believe Iran could be a viable partner in defeating the IS, because the regime is the 'opposite side of the same extremist coin'.

Writing in the Huffington Post online newspaper, Lord Maginnis said of Iran: "Its commitment to radical Shiite Islam helped to create the conditions for the rise of ISIL, by supporting an exclusively Shiite government in Iraq and a repressive dictatorship in Syria.

"Others argue that UK must engage with Iran and Assad in the global fight against ISIL similar to our co-operation with Stalin against Nazi Germany during the WWII.

"What the advocates of this policy fail to recognise is that, whereas Stalin's dictatorship was never born in some sort of reaction to Hitler's Nazi Germany, the religious dictatorship in Iran and its puppet allies in Syria and Iraq, have paved the way for the creation of vicious terrorist groups like ISIL."

Lord Maginnis said US president Barack Obama's and British prime minister David Cameron’s 'meddling' had now left 3,000 members of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran stranded in Camp Liberty, Iraq, and under constant threat from both Iran and the encroaching Islamic State extremists.

The West had also ignored the Iranian resistance under the leadership of Maryam Rajavi, whose ten point plan was the best hope for the future of Iran, he wrote.

He added: "Our neglect for her movement, is part and parcel of a painfully short-sighted approach to the escalating conflicts in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic of Iran with its barbaric treatment of its own people surely cannot be a credible ally in the fight against ISIL. It is, with its dominating influence in Baghdad, a major contributor to current crisis - if embraced by the West it will be the nursery for World War III.

"If an endless cycle of extremism is to be avoided, the West must immediately make a stand against extremism in all its forms. In order to do so, we must extract leverage from all possible relationships with moderate, secular, and democratic players in the Middle East, from the NCRI to the Iraqi Kurds to the Gulf Cooperation Council.

"Our objective cannot merely be to destroy the 2014 Islamic State, but to destroy the conditions that allowed ISIL to exploit a popular uprising in Mosul against the dreadful Nouri al-Maliki. NCRI and PMOI cautioned and alerted the West for 11 years but that fell on deaf ears until reality dawned.

"For the West to acknowledge that there are at least two prominent enemies to freedom and stability in the Middle East would be a start. But by embracing one and opposing the other the West may disrupt the current flow of violence, but it will never halt the growth of extremism. As long as a Shiite theocracy remains in place in Iran, new Sunni extremists will always stand ready to compete with it for control over the soul of the Muslim world."