Supporters of Daesh must be dealt with: Academic

Press TV has conducted an interview with Anthony James Hall, a professor at the University of Lethbridge from Toronto, about the Daesh terrorist group's two deadly car bombing attacks in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, over the weekend, which left more than 200 people dead.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Daesh has suffered a series of setbacks and has responded with this vicious attack on a commercial area, an attempt to possibly break civilian morale in Iraq the way that perhaps the military campaign against them has ruined their morale, your take on this, Sir.

Hall: Well, every day or every few days it seems the name Daesh or the “Islamic State” is in the news whether we’re talking about Baghdad today or Dhaka a couple of days ago or Istanbul or Orlando or San Bernardino or Paris. This “Islamic State” is a proxy army. It is sponsored, funded, armed especially by Saudi Arabia, which is very closely connected to Israel. We know that Turkey was purchasing oil from the “Islamic State.” So, if there is a genuine desire to undermine the traction of the “Islamic State,” you have to look at Saudi Arabia, you have to look at Israel, you have to look at the United States to really deal with the issue at its source.

Press TV: According to you, the Saudis are backing them, but how are they able to keep this group strong as it was suffering a bunch of setbacks? It seems their stocks of explosives, weapons, artillery never seem to dwindle, no matter how besieged they are in certain areas for even prolonged periods, that’s a very troubling concern, how are they able to stay replenished and strong even in the face of setbacks it suffers?
Hall: That’s a very good question. Where are their weapons coming from? Who is transporting them? And what is the nature of their personnel? We know that this is a force that is subject to drug manipulation for instance.

The Saudi overseers were caught with caches of drugs, which are manipulating this “Islamic State.”
Interestingly, John Kerry recently recognized the role of the Iranian government in Iraq in defeating ISIS in Fallujah and of course could we say the liberation of Fallujah from some perspectives? This is very significant. It does seem that there is an emerging sort of triumvirate where Iran and the United States and the government of Iraq are seeking to deal with the ISIS terrorism, but to really deal with it, we have to go to the source. And of course the instrumentalization of proxy armies, or proxy armies seemingly put under an Islamic flag, but are not truly Islamic, are Takfiri, this is what we’re seeing.

And we have to straighten out a lot of disinformation and fear-mongering. Of course this is all about generating fear to exercise certain policies and at the top of the chain of command is definitely the government of Israel, which is exploiting and using the ISIL threat and using other powers such as the United States to advance its own regional agenda, which is eastward expansion, which is Greater Israel, which is territorial aggrandizement of imperial Israel.

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