A senior Iranian official says Tehran is proud to stand by regional resistance movements, Hamas and Hezbollah, regardless of what labels the US uses for them.
"We are proud to defend Hamas and Hezbollah. We are not trying to hide it. They are fighters in the path of God, and you can call them whatever you like," Parliament Speaker, Ali Larijani said in Tehran on Monday, Press TV reported.
"Hezbollah is not a terrorist [group], it defends Islam's honor. Hamas is not a terrorist [group], it is there to defend Palestine," he added.
Larijani then went on to say that the idea of Iran abandoning the two resistance movements was a 'bad US dream'.
In an apparent overture, President Barack Obama sent out a video message to Iran on Nowruz (the Iranian New Year).
In the message, he brought up Iran's support for the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and the democratically elected Palestinian government of Hamas, implying that it must end.
During his Monday speech, the Iranian parliament speaker said it was the US that had created the region's real terrorist organizations.
"You were the ones who held secret meetings with terrorists in Iraq, under the impression that we would not find out. You offered them support if they agreed to turn their guns on Shias and Iran," he said.
It is well known that what became the group that was to become al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan were created, armed and financially assisted by the US and some of its Arab allies, most notably Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis have never denied such charges.
Comments made by the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, at a recent congressional hearing, also confirm that Washington had in the past supported the Arab fighters against the Soviet Union whom eventually morphed into al-Qaeda. She also said that Washington was directly involved in creating and promoting the Taliban in the 1990s in pursuing Islamabad's and Washington's perceived strategic interests (at the expense of Afghanistan).
A 2006 article published by The New Yorker also suggests that the US military and Israel provide PJAK separatists (offshoots of the internationally-recognized terrorist group the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK), with equipment, training and intelligence to destabilize Iran.
...