Photographer: Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said reaching a final nuclear accord with the U.S. and European nations would lead to more co-operation against extremist groups in the Middle East, as the deadline for a deal nears.
If negotiators from the two sides overcome the remaining obstacles for an agreement, an “entirely different environment will emerge for cooperation” focusing “on some very important regional issues such as combating violence and extremism in the region,” Rouhani said today in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Shiite Iran, like the U.S. and its Sunni Gulf Arab partners, has been alarmed by the capture this year of large swaths of territory in neighboring Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State militant group. Collaboration to tackle the threat has been hindered by decades of enmity and rival regional alliances, in particular Iranian support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a leader the U.S. says has lost his legitimacy to rule.
Rouhani delivered a “kind of hard-nosed, very practical, very direct speech,” said Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington. It was “focused on what Iran sees as its interests around the region and internationally: The removal of sanctions and the end or at least the control of regional chaos.”
Year On
Rouhani said this week that a nuclear accord was possible by the Nov. 24 deadline Iran and a group of six world powers have set. Echoing U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech yesterday, he said that failing to reach an agreement would be a missed opportunity.
“Any delay” will raise “the costs, not only at our expense but also at the expense of the economy and trade of the other parties,” he said. “No one should doubt that compromise and agreement on this issue is in the best interest of everyone, especially that of the nations of the region.”
Rouhani’s UN speech last year provided the impetus for his breakthrough phone call with Obama, offering the prospect of détente after 35 years of hostility between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic. Since then, the sides have reached an interim accord on curbing Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the easing of some economic sanctions. Conservative opponents at home have criticized Rouhani for offering Iran’s interlocutors too many concessions.
‘Strategic Blunders’
The Iranian president criticized past U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, including in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying it resulted in a breeding ground for extremism. Democracy is not an “export product” and “cannot be transplanted from abroad,” he said.
The U.S., backed by Arab nations, yesterday expanded a bombing campaign against Islamic State from Iraq to Syria.
The fight against the militants must be led by a regional coalition because they can “shoulder the responsibility” better than the U.S. and its allies who’ve previously made “strategic blunders” in Syria and Iraq, Rouhani said. “Certain intelligence agencies have put blades in the hands of madmen, who now spare no one.”
Leaders of Iran have repeatedly blamed Saudi Arabia for supporting Sunni militant groups fighting in Middle Eastern conflicts, including in Syria’s three-year civil war.
Rouhani “was insistent on the idea that the U.S. could not play a helpful role in leading a coalition or leading the efforts to combat extremism,” Maloney said. This “is not a message that the Obama administration or its critics either at home or in the region are going to be particularly receptive to.”
In Tehran, finance ministry employee Shahrokh Gheisari said Rouhani’s efforts to clinch a nuclear deal had widespread support. “Those who oppose it and are trying to throw stones in the way, they are definitely a minority,” he said. “You find this situation in every regime -- there’s always going to be a bloc who will oppose these things.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Sangwon Yoon in United Nations at syoon32@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net Mark Williams, Ben Holland
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