In recent interviews with Western media, the Iranian president has taken a slightly more optimistic tone on diplomacy than the country’s hardline Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who stated earlier in September that Tehran would not negotiate with Washington on any issue after the nuclear deal.

Rouhani said he recently met Russian officials who told him that they wanted to enter the Syrian “scene” with a renewed determination to fight “Daesh and terrorists”.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who is in New York for this week’s meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, was asked later Sunday whether he would support such an exchange.

“He can’t play a part in the future of Syria and that position hasn’t changed”.

According to Rouhani, the Saudi government “does not cooperate sufficiently in addressing the fate of the missing and transferring the bodies of those killed as well as helping the injured ones”.

This appeal is a strategy for Rouhani to encourage corporations to lobby US Congress on Iran’s behalf, tapping into American corporations’ fears that they are being left behind by United States sanctions that will remain in place. They question whether a real political will to adhere to the letter of this agreement does exist over the long term or not.

“Obviously conversations about how we bring about transition are very important and that’s what we need to see greater emphasis on”, he told reporters.

Mr Corbyn said: “The situation in Syria is desperate, with half the population displaced from their homes and 200,000 dead”.

“If we are to succeed in defeating terrorism, the government in Damascus can not be weakened”. And you do know that archeological and cultural remains in Syria have been destroyed on an nearly daily basis by the terrorists, so all of this worries us.

On Syria, Rouhani emphasizes that predominately Shiite Tehran – supportive of the regime of President Bashar Assad – is most concerned with eliminating the threat from the Sunni-dominated Islamic State militia, which has captured large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and carried out atrocities against civilians in the areas they control. “But we must all act in unison and have a formula that is required to drive out the terrorists, immediately”. Broadcast outlets may use up to sixty (60) consecutive seconds of audio from the interview and must include on-screen chyron to “NPR News” with NPR Logo.