The U.S. Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, addressed Iran’s role in Iraq and opined that “Iran’s foreign policy is designed to dissolve national identities and then to replace them with a sectarian identity to promote sectarian violence to create these paramilitaries and these sort of alternative governments which undermine the authority and the powers of the state”. “We are fully invested in the future of the Iraqi government and its people. We think that we provide a much better offer to the Iraqi people than the Iranian”, Hook added, further assessing that while “we would like to see Iraqi armed forces have the monopoly on force… Iran does not share that vision”.