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DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani predicted a deluge of drugs, refugees and attacks on the West if U.S. sanctions weaken Irans ability to contain them.

FILE PHOTO: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani gives a public speech during a trip to the northern Iranian city of Shahroud, Iran, December 4, 2018. Official President website/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

I warn those who impose sanctions that if Irans ability to fight drugs and terrorism are affected ... you will not be safe from a deluge of drugs, asylum seekers, bombs and terrorism, Rouhani said in a speech carried live on state television.

Separately, Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying that the United States is selling more arms into the Middle East than the region needs, making it a tinderbox.

U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran in May and reimposed sanctions on Irans vital oil industry last month.

Drug trafficking is a serious challenge for Iran as it borders Afghanistan - the worlds largest opium producer - and Pakistan, a major transit country for drugs.

We spend $800 million a year to fight drugs which ensures the health of nations stretching from of Eastern Europe to the American West and North Africa to West Asia. Imagine what a disaster there would be if there is a breach in the dam, Rouhani said.

In 2012, Iran accounted for two thirds of the worlds opium seizures and one fourth of the worlds heroin and morphine seizures, a U.N. report published in 2014 showed.

We have been just as determined in the fight against terrorism ... sacrificing hundreds of valuable troops and spending millions of dollars annually, Rouhani said.

We dont expect the West to pay their share, but they should know that sanctions hurt Irans capacity to fight drugs and terrorism, Rouhani added.

Iran, a key supporter of President Bashar al-Assad in Syrias civil war, has sent military advisers as well as materiel and regional Shiite militias to fight militant groups.

In Iraq, Iranian-backed militias and their Iranian advisers helped Iraq defeat Islamic State.

Economic terrorism means creating horror in a country and create fear in other countries that intend to invest (there). Americas withdrawal from the (nuclear accord) is undoubtedly a clear example of economic terrorism, Rouhani told a meeting of heads of parliaments of China, Russia, and four other countries.

More than 700,000 undocumented Afghans have returned from Iran this year as the Iranian economy tightens, according to data from the U.N.s migration agency, and Iranian media said some Afghans were seeking to enter Turkey to reach Europe.

Zarif warned about the dangers of large U.S. arms sales in the Middle East, where Irans regional rival Saudi Arabia is a major buyer of Western weapons.

The Americans have turned the region into a tinderbox. The level of arms sales by the Americans is unbelievable and much beyond regional needs and this points to the very dangerous policies followed by the Americans, IRNA reported Zarif as saying.

Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Alexander Smith

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Rouhani forecasts 'deluge' of drugs, refugees, attacks if ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Irans Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday they had killed the mastermind behind an attack on a military parade in the Iranian city of Ahvaz last month which left 25 people dead, nearly half of them members of the Guards.

A general view of the attack during the military parade in Ahvaz, Iran September 22, 2018. Tasnim News Agency/via REUTERS

The Guards said in a statement published on state media their forces had killed a man named Abu Zaha and four other militants in Diyala province in Iraq. One news website run by Irans state television said Abu Zaha was a member of Islamic State.

Both Islamic State and an Iranian ethnic Arab opposition movement called the Ahwaz National Resistance, which seeks a separate state in Irans oil-rich Khuzestan province, have claimed responsibility for the Sept. 22 attack. Neither group has provided conclusive evidence to back up its claim.

On Oct. 1, Iran said it had killed several Islamic State leaders in eastern Syria in a missile strike and destroyed the militants supplies and infrastructure.

The Sunni Muslim Islamic State group, in decline in Iraq and Syria, considers the majority Shiite Muslims of Iran to be heretics.

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said those responsible for the parade attack were paid by Sunni Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and that Iran will severely punish those behind the violence.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have denied involvement in the attack.

Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; editing by Andrew Roche

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Russia and the Syrian government warned the US in early September that they planned to carry out counterterrorism operations near a key US garrison in southeastern Syria known as al-Tanf, where several hundred Marines have been stationed since at least 2016.

But the US responded with a live-fire exercise, and the Russians backed down.

In fact, the al-Tanf garrison has long drawn the ire of Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus but all they've been able to do is complain about it.

The Russian state-owned media outlet Sputnik quoted Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem as saying late last month that the US was "gathering the remnants of the Islamic State at this base in order to later send them wage war on the Syrian army."

Late last year, Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov told Russia's Pravda that satellite and other surveillance data indicated "terrorist squads" were stationed at al-Tanf and that terrorists were "effectively training there."

Iran's Press TV cited Gerasimov's quote in an article published this past June titled "US forces training terrorists at 19 camps inside Syria: Russian expert."

Without any real evidence, US adversaries have lobbed many rhetorical attacks against the US forces accusing them of harboring or training terrorists at al-Tanf.

Damascus and Russian state-owned media even claimed in June that the US was preparing a "false flag" chemical attack at al-Tanf "identical to the kind that took place in Douma."

"The U.S. led Coalition is here to defeat ISIS, first and foremost, and that is the objective of the presence at al-Tanf," US Army Col. Sean Ryan, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told Business Insider in an email.

"No U.S. troops have trained ISIS and that is just incorrect and misinformation, it is truly amazing some people think that," Ryan said.

The US has trained Syrian rebels at al-Tanf, namely a group called Maghawir al Thawra. Omar Lamrani, a senior military analyst at Stratfor, told Business Insider the group was "fairly secular by regional standards and has been at the forefront of the fight against ISIS."

Lamrani further described the idea that the US is training the Islamic State or like-minded groups at al-Tanf as "certainly absurd."

"To the Russians and Iranians, almost any group fighting against the Syrian government can be labeled a terrorist group," Lamrani said.

So why do Russia, Iran, and the Syrian government care so much about this garrison?

"I'd say that the primary reasons why Iran cares about it so much is, again, it blocks the Baghdad-Damascus highway," Lamrani said. Tehran uses the highway to transport weapons to the Syrian capital of Damascus, where the government is based.

"The reason they want the land route is that it's easier to bring [weapons] across land in greater quantities, and the shipping route is very vulnerable to Israeli interception, and the air route is expensive and often gets hit by Israeli airstrikes," Lamrani added.

Moscow, on the other hand, is upset about al-Tanf, according to Lamrani, because "it's the last area in Syria where the United States is involved with rebels on the ground that are not Syrian Democratic Forces."

The Russians and the Syrian government have "open channels" with the SDF and want to negotiate not fight with them, Lamrani added.

But Moscow, Tehran, and the Syrian government's ire might go beyond just stymieing the flow of weapons to Damascus and training rebels.

"There's a history at that garrison at al-Tanf," Max Markusen, an associate director and associate fellow of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider.

"I think that the Syrian regime, the Russians and Iranians, would see it as a [symbolic] victory if the United States pulled out of there than just sort of tactical level objectives," Markusen said, adding that there's much resentment for the US having trained rebels at al-Tanf.

But they haven't sought to use force to expel US troops because "the costs of escalation are too high," Markusen said.

So they're relegated to discrediting the al-Tanf garrison.

Going forward, "we will continue to see an escalation of rhetoric," Markusen said, but "I don't think there's going to be a major outbreak of conflict."

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A US base in Syria is a huge thorn in Russia and Iran's side ...

Erin Cunningham

Middle East reporter covering Iran, Turkey, Syria and the wider region

ISTANBUL Iran on Monday launched missile strikes on what it said were Sunni Islamic extremist hideouts in eastern Syria, a move it portrayed as retaliation for a deadly terrorist attack on an Iranian military parade last month.

Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps said it fired six medium-range missiles into Syria from bases in western Iran at 2 a.m. local time, striking east of the Euphrates River and killing and wounding several militants. It said its combat drones then targeted the sites.

A statement on the Guards website described those killed as takfiri terrorists, a term it often uses to refer to the Islamic State. The militant group still holds pockets of territory in Syrias Deir al-Zour province, where U.S. troops are assisting local fighters to defeat the extremists.

The strikes against the Islamic State on Monday, however, came even as Iran had blamed local Arab separatists for last months attack in the southwestern city of Ahvaz. At a military parade Sept.22, gunmen killed at least two dozen people, including a 4-year-old boy. Iran identified the five perpetrators as residents of Ahvaz.

But both the Islamic State and a local separatist group claimed responsibility for the attack. Iran accused regional rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of supporting the local Arab nationalists, who have fought for autonomy from Irans mainly ethnic Persian population.

Irans show of strength Monday appeared to be more about sending a message to its adversaries in the region and abroad than targeting those responsible for the assault.

At least four of the missiles landed in the Hajin area of eastern Syria, where the Islamic State is still active, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Revolutionary Guard said the missiles traveled some 350 miles from Irans Kermanshah province to their targets in Syria. Iran, however, commands a number of loyal proxy forces in Syria that are stationed nearby.

The strikes also capped a week of Iranian diplomacy at the United Nations, where President Hassan Rouhani sought to rally European and other nations to oppose stepped-up U.S. efforts to target Iran.

According to Henry Rome, Iran associate at the Eurasia Group risk analysis firm, Rouhani did not want an Iranian retaliation to dominate conversations at the United Nations.

It is the second time in a month that Iran has fired medium-range ballistic missiles at militant groups in Syria and Iraq. Last month, Iran fired missiles at Kurdish militants based in Iraq.

Bijan Sabbagh contributed to this report.

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NEW YORK The European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said on Wednesday a so-called Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) under consideration to facilitate trade with Iran could be in place "before November."

4:04pm EDT

GENEVA Laughter during U.S. President Donald Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly was a sign of the United States' isolation, the head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said on Wednesday, Fars News reported.

LONDON British Prime Minister Theresa May lobbied for the release of detained British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe during a meeting on Tuesday with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, May's office said.

GENEVA/LONDON An attack on a military parade in Iran is a blow to the image of its Revolutionary Guards, but the elite force could yet turn the bloodshed to its advantage, using public sympathy to bolster itself at the expense of President Hassan Rouhani.

GENEVA U.S. President Donald Trump should stop interfering in the Middle East if he wants the price of oil to stop rising, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

UNITED NATIONS U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani exchanged taunts at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday with Trump vowing more sanctions against Tehran and Rouhani suggesting his American counterpart suffers from a "weakness of intellect." |Video

UNITED NATIONS A senior United Arab Emirates (UAE) official warned European powers on Tuesday that it was offering Iran a glimmer of hope by trying to keep trade flowing, but that ultimately they would fall behind the United States' tough approach on Tehran.

UNITED NATIONS White House national security adviser John Bolton on Tuesday dismissed an EU plan for a special payments plan to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iranian oil sales and pressed the SWIFT global payments messaging system to rethink dealing with Tehran.

UNITED NATIONS Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday criticized Washington for its hostile policy toward his country and said the U.S. approach was doomed to failure.

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