TEHRAN: Iran said on Monday it had rejected a US request for its cooperation against a militant group in its neighbourhood as part of an international coalition, apprehending that the aim of the move was a regime change in Syria.

Iran, which has helped both Syria and Iraq to confront the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, sees the US-led coalition as lacking credibility because some of its members had financed and armed the group as part of their campaign to bring down Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

“Right from the start, the United States asked through its ambassador in Iraq whether we could cooperate against Daesh (IS),” Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei said in a statement. “I said no, because they have dirty hands.”

Mr Khamenei said: “(US) Secretary of State (John Kerry) personally asked (Iranian counterpart) Mohammad Javad Zarif and he rejected the request.”

He accused the US of seeking a “pretext to do in Iraq and Syria what it already does in Pakistan -- bomb anywhere without authorisation”.

“The American ambassador in Iraq asked our ambassador for a session to discuss coordinating a fight against Daesh,” Mr Khamenei said in quotes cited by the Iranian state news agency IRNA.

“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,” he said.

Mr Khamenei said the US-led coalition against the IS would prove as ineffective as the ‘Friends of Syria’ international conferences held as a show of solidarity with anti-Assad rebels.

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2014