Dubai: The United States said on Monday it was opposed to military cooperation with Iran in Iraq but was open to further talks, hours after Tehran said it had rejected US overtures to help in the fight against Islamist militants.
“We are not and will not coordinate militarily... There may be another opportunity on the margins in the future to discuss Iraq,” US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters shortly after the end of a major Paris conference on the issue, to which Iran was not invited.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday he had vetoed a US invitation to cooperate in fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil.)
“The American ambassador in Iraq asked our ambassador [in Iraq] for a session to discuss coordinating a fight against Daesh [Isil],” said Khamenei, in quotes carried on state news agency IRNA.
“Our ambassador in Iraq reflected this to us, which was welcomed by some [Iranian] officials, but I was opposed. I saw no point in cooperating with a country whose hands are dirty and intentions murky.” He said it was Iran’s choice not to work with the country the Islamic Republic has traditionally called the Great Satan, having also refused similar overtures to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his deputy Abbas Araqchi.
Khamenei rejected recent comments by US Secretary of State John Kerry that Washington was opposed to any Iranian role in an international coalition against Isil.
“Now they [the US] are lying, in saying that it is them who excluded us from their coalition, while it was Iran that refused to participate in this collation to begin with,” said Khamenei, 75, who left hospital on Monday following prostate surgery.
In Paris, a conference opened on Monday to discuss how to curb the Islamist movement that has seized a third of Iraq and Syria. Iran was not represented.
Khamenei questioned US resolve in fighting Isil, which has captured tracts of land in Syria and Iraq and has become the most potent opposition to Syrian leader Bashar Al Assad, an ally of Iran’s.
“American officials’ comments on forming an anti-[Isil alliance] are blank, hollow and self-serving, and contradictions in their behaviours and statements attest to this fact,” said Khamenei.
Khamenei said Washington wanted in Iraq what it had in Pakistan — “a playground where they can enter freely and bomb at will”.
“The Americans should keep in mind that if they go ahead with such a thing, then the same problems that they faced in Iraq in the past ten years will come back,” he said, referring to years of conflict between US forces and an array of armed Iraqi groups.