Iranian regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei, in his speech following the fall of the despised Assad dictatorship and the loss of four decades of investment in Syria, attempted to justify this defeat by repeating his claim about “protecting the sanctity of holy shrines.” He said: “Our forces were present in both Iraq and Syria for two reasons: one was to protect the sanctity of the holy shrines. In Samarra, you witnessed that with the help of the Americans, they destroyed and demolished the sacred dome of Samarra.”
It is no secret that the bombing of the Shia Imams’ shrines in Samarra, which led to a horrific sectarian war across Iraq, was carried out under the direct orders of Khamenei. Today, even regime supporters acknowledge that the purpose of this bombing was to create religious divisions in Iraq and advance terrorist and war-mongering objectives. They also react to the claim of protecting holy sites.
At the annual rally of the Iranian Resistance in Paris in June 2013, General George Casey, former commander of the coalition forces in Iraq, said “We didn’t really begin to see the full impact of Iran’s influence until after the bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra in February of 2006… By mid-2006, there was no doubt that Iran was providing weapons and equipment to terrorist organizations inside Iraq.”
The statements of the highest-ranking coalition forces official regarding the Iranian regime’s involvement in the Samarra shrine bombing sparked a massive wave of anger and hatred among the Iraqi people and nationalist forces. Many people, along with religious and political leaders, tribal sheikhs, and Friday prayer leaders, staged sit-ins in city squares, citing General Casey’s remarks and demanding that the case of this crime and its perpetrators be submitted to international courts.
The spokesperson for the protesters in Samarra’s Al-Haq Square said: “Regarding the bombing of the sacred shrines of the Askari Imams by agents of the Iranian regime, we will file complaints with international courts against the Quds Force. Today, the truth has become clear, the game has been exposed, and the hand of the Iranian regime has been revealed. By God, Bashar [al-Assad] will fall by the grace of God, and there will be an end to the Iranian regime, its cronies, and its influence.”
Talal Al-Zobaie, a member of the Iraqi parliament, said, “Casey’s statements refuted all the false accusations Maliki had made against the Iraqi people, and it is clear evidence that the Iranian regime, specifically the Quds Force and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), are involved in shedding Iraqi blood” (Al-Taghier TV, June 28, 2013).
According to Al-Zaman newspaper on June 27, 2013, Wahda Al-Jumaili, a member of the Iraqi parliament, stated that General George Casey’s remarks, the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, indicating that the Iranian regime was responsible for the bombing of the shrines in Samarra in 2006, serve as evidence of the regime’s involvement in Iraq. These statements are an important document that will be recorded as a historical testimony and will hold the Iranian regime accountable in international courts.
The scandal of such terrorist interventions by the Iranian regime was so evident that, according to a report by Al-Taghier TV in June 2013, a year before the 2006 bombing of the shrines in Samarra, Hazem Al-Shaalan, the then Minister of Defense, had informed a delegation from Samarra that the Iranian regime had spent over $30 million to carry out the shrine bombings, aiming to reap the benefits of a sectarian war from this act.
The fact that Khamenei resorts to reopening another case about the bombing of the shrines in Samarra to conceal the disgrace and defeat in Syria reflects his desperation in the current situation.