Iran, Turkey joining hands in Libya
Iran continues to support regional militias with the aim of exporting the ideals of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
This comes at a time it suffers tough economic
conditions and keeps battling the coronavirus.
Tehran is also cooperating with Turkey on Libya to
back the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA).
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is using Iranian ships to
cover up Turkish arms shipments to the GNA, according to an Iranian researcher.
Iranian support
Iranian researcher Babak Taghvaee
revealed on June 6 that Iran plays a secret role in supporting the militias
allied with the GNA for the sake of Ankara.
Turkey, he said, has a plan to control
Libyan natural gas.
He added that Iran had supplied Turkey
with cargo vessels for it to use in ferrying arms from different countries,
including Turkey, Bulgaria and Sudan to Libya, via the Port of Misurata.
The Iranian ships are used in getting
around a United Nations arms embargo on Libya, Taghvaee said.
Secret war
Taghvaee referred to an Iranian ship
that anchored in Sudan and then left it on August 20, 2018 on the road to
Libya. The ship arrived in the Port of Misurata a month later, he said.
He referred to another ship that was
stopped by Libyan authorities. It carried early warning equipment manufactured
in Iran, he said.
He noted that Iranian state media had
received an injunction from Iranian authorities to talk negatively about the
Libyan National Army (LNA).
Taghvaee noted that Iran also sent
military advisors to Tripoli to advise the GNA and its allied militias.
In May 2019, Libyan activists widely
shared a video of rockets at the Port of Misurata.
The rockets were part of an Iranian
arms shipment to Libya, they said.
The added that the shipment contained
100 ammunition containers and 20,000 rockets that would be used in the fight
against the LNA.
