Interviewed during Iran’s commemoration of the 1980 invasion of Iran by Saddam Hussein, military chief of staff Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi dismissed suggestions that the ongoing war against ISIS would require the US and Iran to cooperate.

“You must be dreaming,” Maj. Gen. Firouzabadi said, saying “the Americans are the ones who created ISIS” and that the US involvement in the ISIS war has been ineffectual. Admiral Ali Fadavi, a top Revolutionary Guard commander, echoed these sentiments, saying that the two nations may have common interests in the ongoing war, but that the nature of the two nations meant direct cooperation was impossible.

Decades of tension between the US and Iran has left a great deal of mistrust on both sides, with Obama Administration officials similarly spurning talk of cooperation, despite the two sides being aligned squarely against ISIS in the same war.

There are differences, of course. The US and Iran are largely eye-to-eye in Iraq, but the US strategy in Syria is to see the destruction of both ISIS and the Syrian government itself, and the installation of a largely non-existent pro-US faction, while Iran is keen to see the current Syrian government remain in some form.