TEHRAN: Top Iranian commander Major General Qassem Soleimani has slammed the United States over the recent fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to the ISIS rebel group.
Soleimani, who is the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Quds Force, said that while the Ain al-Asad air base hosting US fighter jets was very close to Ramadi, the American military forces took no action to stop the ISIS militants fighting to take over the Iraqi city.
This is not but complicity in [a] conspiracy, he said during a Sunday gathering of the veterans of the eight-year Iraqi-imposed war against Iran in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman.
There is no will to fight the ISIS, Soleimani said in a reference to the US-led coalition that purports to be targeting ISIS targets inside Iraq and Syria.
He also described the ISIS terror group as a great plague, which should be countered.
The group, whose members slaughter human beings in cold blood while chanting religious slogans, is a big threat, he said.
On May 17, the ISIS militants managed to bring Ramadi under their control.
The Popular Mobilization forces, one of the volunteer groups who have joined the Iraqi army, were dispatched to Anbar after Iraqs Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called on them to join the fight to drive the Takfiri militants out of Ramadi.
Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said on Friday that around 55,000 people had fled Ramadi since mid-May.
Iraqs former national security advisor told Press TV on Sunday that most US fighter jets deployed to bomb terrorists in the Arab country return to their bases without engaging terrorist positions.
Mowaffak al-Rubaie sharply criticized the US-led airstrikes against the ISIS as ineffective, saying, “from where I sit in Baghdad, eight out of each 10” aircraft loaded with ammunition return to their bases without striking their targets.
Elsewhere in his remarks, General Soleimani said, Today, no one stands to take up the fight against this dangerous phenomenon (ISIS) but the Islamic Republic.
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