A senior Iranian cleric says the Paris terrorist attacks have been staged by European governments in a response to their “fear of growing support for Islam on the Continent”.
“The growth of Islam in European countries has led to their governments’ misleading attempts to resort to terrorist actions to defuse this trend”, cleric Ali Saeedi, Khamenei’s representative in the Revolutionary Guards had been quoted by local press as saying.
Referring to Iran’s military involvement in Syria Saeedi said: “if we hadn’t got involved in Syria, Iran would have been gone by now”.
Iranian MP Mohammad Kousari said that if France and Britain rely on Iran’s intelligence sources and volunteers “they can rest assured about the elimination of IS terrorists on their soil”.
Iran’s Khamenei has so far refrained from commenting on the Paris terrorist attacks.
At the height of the Arab Spring Khamenei had called the movement “Islamic awakening” and predicted its ramifications will reach the Western world.