The United States and Israel are the brains behind Al-Qaeda’s terrorist mayhem according to an Iranian diplomat. “In a bid to force Iraq’s Arab neighbors to submit to their Iraq policy, the United States and the Zionist regime orchestrate such terrorist attacks,” the former Iranian ambassador to Syria said Wednesday. His statements were made in an interview with the Iranian Mehr News Agency (MNA).



Former Ambassador Hossein Sheikholeslam was referring to the attacks in Damascus on Tuesday. The attacks took place in the district where the Iranian, Canadian, and British embassies are located, as well as the offices of the United Nations.



“Most Arab countries in the Middle East region do not accept the Iraq policy of the U.S. Therefore, they are trying to entangle regional countries by supporting such terrorist acts,” Sheikholeslam continued.



MNA says the former ambassador claimed that this “was not the first time that the United States and Israel have employed Al-Qaeda elements to help them realize their terrorist objectives.”



The Mehr News Agency is based in Tehran with its stated goal being “to provide accurate and up-to-the-minute information to the public, with an emphasis on news about Iran and the rest of the Islamic world.” MNA, the top Iranian news agency recently produced an article entitled What Price 'Freedom' in which it alleged that U.S. military personnel are "committing systematic sexual abuse against Iraqi civilians..." The article directs the reader to a website that has been allegedly set up by the U.S. Armed Forces and contains alleged photos of the atrocities committed in Iraq against "women and children".



The website contains nothing of the sort and is, in fact, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), an organization that has no connection to the U.S. military or the operations in Iraq. RAINN is the largest domestic anti-sexual assault organization in the U.S.