Iranian official: U.S.-Iran talks on Iraq are a one-way conversation

U.S. officials’ discussions with Iran about the militant threat in Iraq are one-way conversations, with Americans doing all the talking, a spokeswoman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

The spokeswoman, Marzieh Afkham, told journalists at her weekly news conference that U.S. officials “only briefed Iranian diplomats about America’s stances” regarding the fight with the militant group Islamic State, the Nasim News Agency reported. “Nothing else,” she was quoted as saying.

The U.S. and Iranian governments, longtime adversaries, have had repeated discussions this year about their separate efforts to combat Islamic State, which controls about one-third of Iraq and Syria.

The latest conversation was a brief discussion last week on the sidelines of a meeting in Geneva about the international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, U.S. officials disclosed Tuesday.

U.S. officials have provided no details about what has been said in the discussions, and insist that there is no cooperation between the two governments against the group. The goal of the contacts has been to generally explain U.S. plans in Iraq, in part to avoid unwitting conflicts between the countries’ military forces, officials have said.

The contacts are a sensitive subject. Iraqis, Sunni Arab states, Turkey and Israel find the idea of U.S.-Iranian collaboration alarming, and news of any such arrangement could undermine efforts to build a regional coalition against Islamic State.

In addition, the Iranian officials regularly accuse the U.S. government of creating the militant group as part of its effort to unseat President Bashar Assad of Syria.

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