Iran Declares ‘The End of Islamic State’ in Live State TV Broadcast

TEL AVIV – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared the end of the Islamic State in a live address broadcast on state TV.

A senior commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Major General Qassem Soleimani, also declared the end of the terror group operating in Syria and Iraq in a message released on Tuesday by its agency Sepah News.

The IRGC further thanked Lebanese terror group Hezbollah for its “decisive” role in combating the Islamic State.

Rouhani thanked “all the fighters of Islam,” as well as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iraqi and Syrian armies for “the end of this group that brought nothing but evil, destruction, murder and savagery.”

“We helped them in accordance with our religious and Islamic duties,” he said.

Iran, which backs Syrian President Bashar Assad, has sent thousands of “volunteer recruits” to fight IS on the ground in Syria and Iraq.

Separately on Tuesday, Rouhani told French President Emmanuel Macron that Iran had no plans to “dominate” the region.

“Our presence in Iraq and Syria is at the invitation of the governments of those countries to fight terrorism,” Rouhani was quoted as saying in a phone call with Macron.

Rouhani said “Iran does not seek to dominate” the region, but was instead working “for peace and security and to avoid the dismembering of countries.”