US calls on Iran to halt support for ‘destabilizing forces’

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States yesterday said it hoped Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s newly re-elected president, will halt his country’s support for “destabilizing forces”, end ballistic missile tests and carry out democratic reforms during his second term.

“We hope that if Rouhani wanted to change Iran’s relationship with the rest of the world, those are the things he could do,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he was accompanying President Donald Trump.

Rouhani, a cleric who, with foreign minister Javad Zarif broke the taboo of holding direct talks with the United States and reached an international deal in 2015 to curb Iran’s nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions, won 57 per cent of the vote in Friday’s election. He defeated Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric and acolyte of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate power in Iran’s complex, hybrid system of theocratic and republican elements.

Trump’s administration is likely to keep putting pressure on Iran over its weapons programs, as well as what it sees as Tehran’s efforts to destabilize the Middle East, former US officials and analysts said.

“I think the Trump administration will remain pretty consistent on this issue. So I don’t expect any change” in US policy toward Iran, said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a former CIA Iran specialist.

Tillerson’s comments at a news conference in Riyadh appeared to reinforce that view, although he left the door open to further talks with Iran.

He said the United States hopes Rouhani will “begin a process of dismantling Iran’s network of terrorism,” and ending its financing of terrorist groups, as well as providing them personnel and logistical support “and everything they provide to these destabilizing forces that exist in this region. We also hope that he puts an end to their ballistic missile testing.”

Despite the nuclear deal, the United States still considers Iran a “state sponsor of terrorism” for its support of groups such as Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia.