Iran’s foreign minister has warned the United States not to send more ground troops to Syria, following a CNN report that said the Pentagon is considering a plan to deploy a large conventional force to Syria. Iran has been backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the U.S. has been targeting ISIS, while supplying some training and support to forces fighting Assad. In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said more U.S. troops in Syria would fuel extremism.

Mohammad Javad Zarif: “I believe the presence of foreign troops in an Arab territory, against the wish of the government and the people of those territories, is in and of itself a recipe for these demagogues, these extremists, to rally behind and to gain new support and to recruit new fighters, who are disenfranchised youth, who have been deprived of their dignity because of certain policies that have been followed.”