US, Israel seek to ignite sectarian war among Muslims: Commentator

Press TV has interviewed Ridwan Rizk, a political commentator in Beirut, to discuss the recent remarks by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on Islamic unity.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. Rizk welcome to the program. Please give us your thoughts on the recent comments made by Ayatollah Khamenei, most notably the statement stating that “enemies are seeking to trigger sectarian conflicts among Muslims”.

Rizk: Well, this is very obvious and this was led by the Americans long time ago and the Israelis are working on it so hard just to ignite a sectarian war and, unfortunately, they have found the right people to cooperate with in the Muslim world and what made the situation worse is by Turkey joining this kind of campaign. I mean Saudi Arabia and Qatar are the leaders of igniting this sectarian war and it is since the 80s let’s say, if we do not want to go further back, that they [have] worked on it; they did not succeed in the first and they kept on hammering this issue till they achieved [what] they want.

I believe that is just the haters against the Muslims; it has reached a point where it should be just the red alert, the red line [that] is being crossed. You know sectarian attacks against minorities all over the world, even not only in Muslim countries sometimes in non-Muslim countries, we are talking about Nigeria like you know some Muslim minorities, very small Shiite minority was attacked, Sheikh Zakzaky was even almost get killed and a massacre among this minority in that part of the world. And we are seeing lots of attacks against Shiite minorities from Sunni minorities, which now unfortunately they are represented by terrorists groups like ISIS and Nusra Front and other groups and the Saudis, let’s say the Saudis [and] the Qataris are still insisting in not only supporting [the terrorists], they are protecting; they are just containing these kind of terrorist groups. And I believe that they are part of some of their intelligence service or offices around the Muslim world and if we want to say that this is clear that everything that is happening is just the interest of the imperialism of the Western world, let’s say America, and the most beneficial out of this situation is Israel because the Israelis announced many times that they are working on dividing or founding, establishing like sectarian states among the Arab world and so far, unfortunately, they have succeeded because we are seeing that Muslim countries are being destroyed by Muslim hands and we are talking here about Libya; we are talking about Yemen.

It is so obvious that the Saudis led Muslim coalition against the poor Yemenis and they have killed more Yemenis than ever in the history of Yemen before. Now we are seeing that also Egypt is paying the price, Syria is destroyed and so on. And we do not know which is coming next because if this ball keeps on rolling, I believe that we might expect other countries to be destroyed and we are seeing that Israel has paid no price at all and even the Palestinian cause is just vanishing; we are not hearing anything about the rights of the Palestinians to establish their own country or their own state and now that is [why] the Israelis are feeling very comfortable, very well-protected because the all of what we call that is their enemies is being destroyed one country after another.

And now we might expect or might see also the sectarian haters could evolve in a way that we might see other countries can get involved in some sectarian conflicts or wars because we are seeing sometimes in countries that we never ever expected to see. And the Saudi is leading a Muslim coalition against Yemen or Syria, [instead] they should have complied with the urge of Iran long time before in many negotiations just to establish a Muslim coalition in protecting the Muslim world, protecting the Muslim values and doctrines against this invasion coming from the imperialism and the Israelis.  

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