Iran Rejects U.S.-Led Coalition against IS, Washington 'Open to Talks'

Iran said Monday it rejected a U.S. request for its cooperation against the jihadist Islamic State as part of an international coalition whose true aim Tehran sees as regime change in Syria.

Seen from Tehran, which has helped both Damascus and Baghdad to confront IS advances, the coalition lacks credibility because some of its members had financed and armed the group as part of their campaign to bring down Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"Right from the start, the United States asked through its ambassador in Iraq whether we could cooperate against Daesh," Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei said in a statement on his official website, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

"I said no, because they have dirty hands," said Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state in the Islamic Republic.

"Secretary of State (John Kerry) personally asked (Iranian counterpart) Mohammad Javad Zarif and he rejected the request," said Khamenei, who was leaving hospital after what doctors said was successful prostate surgery.

He accused Washington of seeking a "pretext to do in Iraq and Syria what it already does in Pakistan -- bomb anywhere without authorization."

At the end of a Paris conference on coordinating the fight against IS, to which Iran and Syria were not invited, the United States said Monday it was opposed to military cooperation with Iran in Iraq but was open to further talks.

"We are not and will not coordinate militarily... There may be another opportunity on the margins in the future to discuss Iraq," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters shortly after Khamenei's statement.

For Khamenei, "the Americans are lying when they say they refused to have Iran in the alliance because from the very start we declared our opposition to such a presence."

Later on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ruled out military cooperation with Iran but said Washington remained open to talks with Tehran about the threat posed by IS militants.

"We will not be coordinating with Iran" on military action, "but as I said, we are open to have a conversation," Kerry told reporters in Paris after the international conference.

"On Syria strikes, we are not going to coordinate with the Syrians, we have made that very, very clear, but there are all kinds of ways of communicating to avoid mistakes or disaster," he added.

U.S. President Barack Obama has outlined a strategy to combat the IS, including air strikes in Syria and expanded operations in Iraq, where U.S. aircraft have carried out more than 160 strikes since early August.

But Washington had steadfastly ruled out tipping off the regime of President Bashar Assad about any potential strikes in Syria, where militants hold a quarter of the land.

On the nuclear talks, Kerry said: "I am hopeful it will possible to find a way to reach an agreement that is important to the world. But there are very difficult issues" still to be resolved.

Washington had appealed for help from all regional states against the jihadists, who spearheaded a lightning offensive through the Sunni Arab heartland north and west of Baghdad in June and then unleashed a wave of atrocities against ethnic and religious minorities.

But last week Kerry ruled out cooperation with Tehran citing its "engagement in Syria and elsewhere".

Tehran has been the main regional ally of the Damascus government throughout a three-and-a-half-year armed revolt against Assad.

It strongly criticized President Barack Obama's announcement last Wednesday that he had authorized U.S. air strikes against IS targets in Syria without the consent of Damascus.

Khamenei predicted the U.S.-led coalition against IS would prove as ineffective as the so-called "Friends of Syria" international conferences held as a show of solidarity with anti-Assad rebels.

"The alliance against Syria... didn't manage to do anything, and it will be the same thing in Iraq," said Iran's leader.

In Paris, the world's top diplomats pledged to support Iraq in its fight against IS militants by "any means necessary", including "appropriate military assistance".

Representatives from around 30 countries and international organizations, including the United States, Russia and China, took part.

The coalition has divergent interests, with "Turkey treating Daesh leaders in its hospitals, Qatar financing them, and with Saudi Arabia which helped set them up in Syria," Iranian analyst Amir Mohebian told AFP.

He said the Americans "must choose between Assad and the terrorists because there are no moderate rebel groups in Syria."

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond on Monday urged Iran to cooperate with the international coalition to fight jihadists in Iraq even if Tehran did not join the group.

"It was always unlikely that Iran would become a fully fledged member of the coalition but I think we should continue to hope that Iran will align itself broadly with the direction that the coalition is going," Hammond told reporters after the Paris meeting.

He also said he hoped Iran would be "cooperative with the plans that the coalition is putting in place, if not actively a part of the coalition."

Hammond said Britain had not so far "made any decision on whether or not we are going to engage in air strikes at this stage."

The British minister said air strikes in Syria would be a far more complicated matter than in Iraq and of a far bigger magnitude for "all sorts of reasons, military, legal and technical, but we haven't ruled it out."

"We haven't made a decision yet about how we will best contribute to the coalition effort against ISIL but I have said this morning in the meeting that Britain is clear that it will play a leading role in the coalition," said the minister, using an alternative name for the Islamic State.