MOSCOW, September 21 (RIA Novosti) - Iran is ready to work with the United States in fighting the Islamic State (IS) in exchange for more flexibility on Iran's uranium enrichment program, Reuters reported Sunday, citing a senior Iranian official.
"Iran is a very influential country in the region and can help in the fight against the ISIL terrorists but it is a two-way street. You give something, you take something," the official was quoted as saying by Reuters.
The officials who asked not to be named added that western powers will find it difficult to separate nuclear negotiations from regional conflicts.
The unnamed officials voiced Iran's willingness to work with the United States excluding military support, saying that Iran wants its western allies to show flexibility on the number of atomic centrifuges Iran could keep under any long-term deal that would lift sanctions in exchange for limitation on Iran's nuclear program.
But Iran sent mixed messages after they refused to pledge support, according to a statement by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"The American ambassador in Iraq asked our ambassador [in Iraq] for a session to discuss coordinating a fight against Daesh [Islamic State]," Khamenei said. "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."
Later on Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry implied that the position of the United States may be shifting in expecting a military partnership with Iran to fight the IS.
"The coalition required to eliminate ISIL is not only, or even primarily, military in nature," Kerry said at the Friday United Nations Security Council meeting on Iraq in New York adding that Iran also had a role to play.
But western officials told Reuters that Iran did not bring up nuclear discussion in the Friday meeting and that diplomats deemed it unlikely that any sanctions against Iran's uranium enrichment program would be lifted.
Negotiations are expected to continue in New York until at least September 26.
The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), is a radical Sunni Islamist group that has been fighting the Syrian government since 2012. , In June 2014, it launched an offensive in Iraq and seized vast areas in both countries, proclaiming an Islamic caliphate on its conquered territories.
