UNITED NATIONS: President of Iran Hassan Rouhani charged the West and some Arab countries on Thursday with sowing seeds of extremism in the Middle East and committing strategic blunders giving rise to the Islamic State and other violent jihadist groups.

He said it was up to the region itself to find a solution to the problem.

“Certain intelligence agencies have put blades in the hand of madmen who now spare no-one,” President Rouhani said in his speech in the United Nations General Assembly.

He said: “all those who have played a role in founding and supporting these terror groups must acknowledge their errors”, and apologise.

He also used the occasion to denounce the Western-led sanctions imposed on Iran’s nuclear program and reiterated his government’s desire to resolve Iran’s protracted dispute with the United States and other nations over the programme.

On negotiations on its nuclear programme, he said that these had been linked to Iran’s cooperation in combating the Islamic State and its affiliates.

He added that no security cooperation was possible until the sanctions were lifted.

“The people of Iran, who have been subjected to pressures especially in the last three years as a result of continued sanctions, cannot place trust in any security cooperation between their government with those who have imposed sanctions and created obstacles in the way of satisfying even their primary needs, such as food and medicine,” he said.

President Rouhani said he had the same concerns over extremism that his counterparts from the United States and Europe had expressed on Wednesday regarding the rise of the Islamic State, the militant group that now controls parts of Syria and Iraq.

He rejecrted the notion that Iran sought to control other nations in the region, terming that a “delusional Iranophobia”, and reminded the world that Iran was among the first countries to assist Iraq in June when Islamic State fighters invaded the country from neighbouring Syria.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2014