President Obama and other U.S. officials have only excluded two countries from directly participating in America's ISIS-battling coalition: Syria, whose president, Bashar al-Assad, the U.S. wants out of power; and Iran, which is trying to leverage its participation to ease U.S. nuclear sanctions, according to U.S. officials.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei begs to differ. On Monday, Khamenei said that Secretary of State John Kerry had personally asked Iran's foreign minister to help fight ISIS, and "I said no, because they have dirty hands." Another U.S. military campaign in the region would end "in the same problems they faced in Iraq in the past 10 years," Khamenei added.
At America's request, Iran and Syria weren't invited to Monday's international anti-ISIS planning conference in Paris.
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