Islamic State of Iraq threatens Iran

The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq threatened to wage war against Iran unless it stops supporting Iraq within two months, according to an audiotape.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi said his fighters have been preparing for four years to wage a battle against Iran.

We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two-month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi government and to stop direct and indirect intervention ... otherwise a severe war is waiting for you, he said in the 50-minute audiotape released Sunday. The tape, which could not be independently verified, was posted on a Web site commonly used by insurgent groups.

In the recording, al-Baghdadi also gave Sunnis and Arab countries doing business in Iran or with Iranians a two-month deadline to cease their ties.

We advise and warn every Sunni businessman inside Iran or in Arab countries especially in the Gulf not to take partnership with any Iranian businessman this is part of the two-month period, he said.

Al-Baghdadi said his group was responsible for two suicide truck bomb attacks in May in Iraq's northern Kurdish region. He said the attacks in Irbil and Makhmur showed the Islamic jihad, or holy war, was progressing in the Kurdish areas.

At least 14 people were killed when a suicide truck bomb struck a government building in Irbil, Kurdistan�s capital, on May 9. Four days later in Makhmur, another suicide truck bomb tore through the offices of a Kurdish political party, killing 50 people.

Al-Baghdadi criticized Kurdish leaders for their alliance with Iraq�s government and accused them encouraging unsavory morals.

The leaders of apostasy ... have impeded the march of Islam in Muslim Kurdistan and helped communism and secularism to spread. ... They insulted the religious scholars ... encouraged vices and women without veils, he said.

Source: AP

Kavkaz Center