Iran rejects U.S. action in Iraq, ISIL tightens Syria border grip

Iran's supreme leader accused the United States on Sunday of trying to retake control of Iraq by exploiting sectarian rivalries, as Sunni insurgents drove towards Baghdad from new strongholds along the Syrian border. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's condemnation of U.S. action came three days after President Barack Obama offered to send 300 military advisers to help the Iraqi government. Khamenei may want to block any U.S. choice of a new prime minister after grumbling in Washington about Shi'ite premier Nuri al-Maliki. The supreme leader did not mention the Iranian president's recent suggestion of cooperation with Shi'ite Tehran's old U.S. adversary in defense of their mutual ally in Baghdad. On Sunday, militants overran a second frontier post on the Syrian border, extending two weeks of swift territorial gains as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) pursues the goal of its own power base, a ‘caliphate’ straddling both countries that has raised alarm across the Middle East and in the West. ‘We are strongly opposed to U.S. and other intervention in Iraq,’ IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei as saying. ‘We don’t approve of it as we believe the Iraqi government, nation and religious authorities are capable of ending the sedition,’ according to Reuters.