Iranian FM pens article for pro-Assad Cumhuriyet daily on ‘extremism'

On the same day as Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's scheduled visit to Turkey on Tuesday was postponed, as officials from Turkey's Foreign Ministry confirmed yesterday, an article penned by Zarif was published in Turkey's Cumhuriyet daily concerning the rise of extremism in the Middle East, criticizing the policies of Turkey and the U.S. in Syria.

In the article – in a paper that once had a fierce anti-Iranian stance - Zarif criticized the "crude efforts and military interventions" for "socially designing" Middle Eastern societies and said, "The so-called Greater Middle East Initiative, which aims at socially and politically designing Middle Eastern societies with the 'democracy' excuse, theoretically prepared the framework for military interventions."

"There is a consensus that violent extremist groups benefited from the havoc that erupted during the U.S. invasion in Iraq. An ISIS-like [Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham] group that is nourished by collapse and chaos, showed progress thanks to the instability and chaos that happened following the U.S.'s attack on Iraq in 2003," Zarif said in the article.

Zarif claimed that extremist components in Syria turned out to threaten even those who supported them.