Bin Laden Left; So Must America

The Islamic republic’s foreign minister, foreign ministry spokesperson, national security chief, and state-run media outlets reacted with caution to news of Osama bin Laden’s death.

On May 2, the U.S. President Barack Obama announced on national television that the United States had killed Osama bin Laden, leader of the al Qaeda network and the mastermind behind the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The Islamic republic’s foreign minister, Ali-Akbar Salehi, said in reaction to bin Laden’s death, “With the killing of bin Laden, there is no excuse for the U.S. presence in the region.”

Speaking at a press conference in Qatar, where he is meeting with several Qatari officials, Salehi said, “We believed from the outset that they should not have attacked the region with this excuse.”

According to this senior Islamic republic official, “If the US invaded the region under such a pretext, the problem is over now and they had better pull out of the region immediately and stop the killing of regional people.”

The head of the National Security and Foreign Policy committee in the Iranian parliament, Alaeddin Boroujerdi , was the first state official to react to the news of bin Laden’s death, questioning its truth.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi said, “I don’t know if the news reported by Americans is true, because they have announced several times that bin Laden has been killed.”

Ramin Mehmanparast, the spokesperson for the foreign ministry, was another senior official to react to the news. He said, “We hope that this event would lead to the restoration of peace and tranquility in the region.”

The foreign ministry spokesperson continued, “The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that foreign countries now have no excuse for military buildup in the region to fight terrorism,”

Meanwhile, many state-run media outlets that had initially doubted the news of bin Laden’s death released analyses within hours to examine the implications of the al Qaeda leader’s death.

The hardline Kayhan daily, wrote in a Tuesday morning report titled, “Expiration Date for CIA Agent: America Killed Its Mercenary,” that “Obama’s remarks indicating that al Qaeda attacks will continue reveal that bin Laden’s death is not the end of bloodshed by American troops in the Middle East. The bloodshed will continue.”

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic’s official news agency, IRNA, quoted a Pakistani embassy official in Tehran, Amanollah Rashid, as saying, “Thus fur we have not received any official news of Osama bin Laden’s death.”

At the same time, IRNA published a piece titled “American’s Trump Card Burns,” writing, “The western media always attempts to erase records of bin Laden’s cooperation with the American intelligence apparatus from his biography, but the truth is that Osama was the product of the United States and British intelligence systems.”