Daesh suffered setback in Iraq's Ramadi: Pundit

Press TV has interviewed Sabah Jawad, director of the Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation from London, on declaration of victory by Iraqi army troops and mobilization forces in the battle for the central city of Ramadi.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The Iraqi army has managed to liberate the city of Ramadi from ISIL (Daesh) terrorists, Syria has also made gains against extremists in their country, what is the significance of these achievements in both Iraq and Syria?

Jawad: It’s a serious setback actually for what’s happening in Ramadi today. The liberation of Ramadi is a serious setback for ISIS (Daesh). It’s a serious setback for terrorist groups in Syria as well.

Particularly in the past few days [there] were some leaders of different terrorist groups, including [that of] the Islamic Army (Jaysh al-Islam) Zahran Alloush, [who] was killed with his top leaders. And that will affect actually terrorist operations in Syria.

And what will remain in Iraq’s Mosul and Fallujah … if the Iraqi government and the Americans don’t put pressure on the mobilization forces to [clinch] a quick victory against terrorism in Iraq, in Mosul and in Fallujah as well.

We listened to the video message by the leader of ISIS in Iraq Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the past few days. And actually the statements from him are indication of the defeat they are facing.

It was a defeated speech in days and probably they’re leaving the ground for a defeat of his movement in Iraq and Syria. The noose is tightening around their necks in Syria and Iraq.

And Taiz is turning against him very much soon particularly with the help of the people of Iraq, the people of Syria and the Lebanese, [the help] from Iran and also [the help] from Russia as well.

It’s been a very effective campaign against terrorists and their sources, including oil smuggling from Syria. However, they transferred their oil smuggling operations from Syria because of the damage done to them … [in Iraq]. And the oil for ISIS is going through Iraqi Kurdistan and from there they are shipped and transferred to Turkey as well.

Soon we will see the beginning of the end of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. And however, what we have to be mindful is that the Americans really with some regional powers who created organizations like ISIS will want to keep them as long as possible to implement their policy in the Middle East, because for Iraq and for Syria what they are looking for is to basically partition Syria and Iraq.

And this is a very dangerous plan. It has to be opposed by the Iraqi people and the Syrian people and other people in the Middle East.

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