US, 'some' regional countries promoting terrorism: Shamkhani

Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani, who hosted a security meeting with his counterparts from Russia, China, India and Afghanistan in Tehran on Wednesday, said they all agreed that the terrorists and their supporters needed to be confronted.

"All of the participants believed that Daesh was still around because of the support it received both from regional countries in the form of funding, and from transregional countries such as the US," he said at a press conference at the end of a one-day meeting, dubbed Regional Security Dialogue.

"It can be seen in [countries] like Iraq, Syria and more recently Afghanistan that causing security imbalance through terror groups acts as a deterrent strategy to help sustain America's military policy in the region," he added.

Shamakhani underlined Tehran's willingness to expand ties with all of its neighbors despite Washington's plots.

"The reason why some countries in the region were absent was because some countries are at risk of terror and some countries create terror," he said.

Asked about Pakistan's absence, however, Shamkhani said Islamabad was invited and even took part in preliminary talks, but the Pakistani delegation decided to skip the conference until the new government gets settled.  

Islamabad would attend the future meetings, he said.

The top Iranian official asserted that Iran would help its neighbors fight terrorists and confront their regional supporters, as it has done in Iraq and Syria by helping their governments to purge Daesh.

The meeting came only four days after a terrorist attack targeted a military parade in the southern Iranian city of Ahvaz, leaving scores of casualties.

Addressing the conference, Shamkhani said earlier in the day that the terror attack once again laid bare the “double-standard attitude” adopted by certain states claiming to be on the frontline of the fight against terror.

He censured the “instrumentalization” of terrorism as well as the financial, political, logistical and ideological support for terror groups as examples of such double-standard polices.