The Foreign Ministry spokesman said only an agreement among Middle East states on collective security cooperation will help bring stability and sustainable development to the region.
Speaking in a press briefing in Tehran on Monday, Hossein Jaberi Ansari made the statement while referring to media speculations on the desire of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council for a security partnership with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Ansari said reports by some Arab media on the issue have exaggerated the feasibility and dimensions of the plan and are more like "media propaganda", Fars News Agency reported.
The spokesman said not only such measures will never help promote regional security, but they will add to problems.
Reportedly, the Persian Gulf Arab states are pushing for a strategic partnership with the NATO military alliance by widening a 2004 agreement known as the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. The move is seen by many political analysts as an anti-Iran measure.
"The history of the past two decades shows Iran has never been a threat to neighbors and it will never be," Ansari said.
The spokesman said in recent decades, Iran has proposed engaging in cooperation with its Persian Gulf neighbors to promote regional security, but those calls have always fallen on deaf ears.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran has frequently proposed practical plans [for security cooperation], but unfortunately, it has never received a positive response from regional governments," he said.
"These governments [referring to Persian Gulf Arab states] prefer to internationalize regional affairs and drag other governments into the region, a policy that only produces insecurity and instability."
Despite reports by Arab news outlets, US Secretary of State John Kerry recently suggested that a stronger relationship between NATO and (P)GCC ought to be carefully considered.
