Hassan Rouhani Hints at ISIS and Nuclear Gaps to Be Bridged
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran offered some insight Wednesday into what he would say Thursday in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, telling an audience of foreign policy intellectuals that he welcomed the West’s new alarm over the Islamic State militant group, disagreed that bombing Syria was the answer, and reminded the world that Iran was the first to help its neighbor Iraq when Islamic State fighters invaded three months ago.
In a speech sponsored by the New America Foundation at the New York Hilton in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Rouhani also asserted that Iran had shown great flexibility toward resolving its protracted nuclear dispute with the six world powers with whom it was negotiating, and that he hoped the parties could complete an agreement by their November deadline.
He agreed with President Obama, who had spoken at the General Assembly earlier in the day, that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Jaish, must be eradicated. And he agreed with President Obama’s assertion that the opportunity to reach a nuclear agreement, the biggest issue in Iran’s relations with the West, should not be wasted.
Mr. Rouhani said, as others in his administration have, that the genesis of the Islamic State was a result of foreign meddling — meaning Arab and Western meddling — in the three-and-a-half-year-old insurgency in Syria, in which Iran supports the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Obama administration’s plan for bombings and airstrikes, Mr. Rouhani said, is illegal, inappropriate and flawed. Illegal because Syria did not give permission. Inappropriate because it will not address the root cause of the Islamic State’s existence. Flawed because the United States is hoping the plan strengthens a Western-backed insurgent group, the Free Syrian Army, which Mr. Rouhani described as just another terrorist incarnation. “Call it whatever you like,” he said.
He also denounced Israel’s 50-day war with Palestinian militants in Gaza, in which more than 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including many women and children. Mr. Rouhani said Iran, which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, also considers the Gaza conflict “a good rallying point for extremist groups” that would further inflame the region.
Reminded of his ice-breaking telephone conversation with Mr. Obama a year ago, when both offered hope that a nuclear agreement could lead to a fundamental improvement in the estranged relationship between the two countries, Mr. Rouhani sounded a note of caution when asked what other benefits could result.
Invoking what he called an old Persian saying, Mr. Rouhani replied: “Let’s first raise the baby we’ve got before we go on to No. 2.”