Analysis: With ISIS on the Run, Is It Time to Focus on Iran?

Iraq announced the official defeat of the ISIS terrorist group on its soil recently. Efforts in Syria pinpointing on the cities of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, the last two ISIS strongholds, are also on the rise with estimates forecasting the group’s complete annihilation in October. Unfortunately, since the rise of ISIS in 2014, thanks to the marginalization and crackdown of mass Sunni populations by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the Iran’s regime has benefited from the existence of ISIS to divert the international attention and crosshairs away from its criminal activities, the author Heshmal Alavi writes in his opinion for Al Arabiya.

After the three-year long devastation and destruction by ISIS, the international community must pay much more attention and a big part of its energy and to put a big pressure on Iran to bring an end to its criminal activities as regional meddling and bellicosity.

Most recently revelations have made clear of Iran’s efforts to produce advanced, precision weapons in Lebanon and Syria. These activities are dangerously close to Israel, an enemy Tehran’s regime has sworn to wipe off the map.

Iran has been very active in Syria and focusing efforts to transform the country into a military entrenchment base. Anyone having knowledge about the Iranian regime’s nature and recent history understands how Tehran’s ruling clerics seek to establish war fronts across the Middle East to spread their malign influence.