New York: Iran’s foreign minister ruled out cooperating with the US in helping Iraq fight Isil militants and warned that the terrorist group poses a much broader global threat that needs new thinking to eradicate.
Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Wednesday that Iran has serious doubts about the willingness and ability of the US to react seriously to the “menace” from Isil “across the board” and not just pick and choose where to confront it as it has just started doing in Iraq.
“This is a very mobile organisation,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations. “This is not a threat against a single community nor a threat against a single region. It was not confined to Syria, nor will it be confined to Iraq. It is a global threat.”
Iran was the first country to provide help to neighboring Iraq when Isil swept across the border from Syria in July. France wanted Iran to attend an international conference in Paris on Monday aimed at coordinating actions to crush Isil extremists in Iraq, but the US said “no.”
Zarif called the 24 participating nations at the Paris conference “a coalition of repenters” because most supported Isil “in one form or another” from its inception following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
At the end of the day, he said, they created “a Frankenstein that came to haunt its creators.”
Zarif said Iran’s assistance — without any troops — helped Iraq prevent Isil from taking over Baghdad and the Kurdish capital Arbil.
Zarif said it’s now time for the international community “and particularly the coalition of the repenters” to stop providing financing, military equipment and safe passage for the group and its fighters.
Zarif said the international community must begin to deal with the resentment and disenfranchisement that allows Isil to attract young people from the Middle East to Europe and the US.
The international community, he said, must also recognise that in a globalised world problems can’t be solved through coercion, exclusion or imposing solutions.
Zarif agreed with US President Barack Obama that the group is neither Islamic nor a state. But he was critical of the US approach to dealing with the threat from the group.
In Iraq, where the US is carrying out airstrikes, Zarif said, “it will not be eradicated through aerial bombardment.”
In Syria, where the US is beefing up military support for the moderate opposition to confront the extremists and step up opposition to President Bashar Al Assad’s government, he said, “you cannot fight Isil and the government in Damascus together.”
When Zarif was asked what circumstances could lead the two countries to collaborate or even discuss the threat posed by Isil in Iraq, he said he told US Secretary of State John Kerry that Iran has two fundamental principles - “it should be for the Iraqis to decide and we should not be rewarding terrorists.”
He also implicitly criticised the US for supporting Iraq’s new Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi to replace Nouri Al Maliki, saying Iraqis must be allowed to determine their own politics.
“And that was one of the problems we had in the initial approach by the US, and that is why we turned it down,” Zarif said.
