The United States should stop treating Iran as if it were governed by "mad mullahs" and open direct talks with Tehran, the leader of Iraqi Kurdistan's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has said.

Bafel Talabani told a strategic forum in Sulaymaniyah that Iranians were often misunderstood in the West. "We don't find it difficult talking to the Iranians," he said. "As an ally of Mr Trump and, strangely, an ally of the Iranians [I say] the mighty US can do it."

Talabani said Iran was emerging from the war with the United States and Israel "stronger, but different", and described a recent trip to Tehran very differently from the Trump administration's picture of a country near economic collapse. "I thought I was in London," he said, noting that fewer than half the women and girls he saw wore headscarves and restaurants were filled with young people dancing.

Khor Mor attack and air defence

Talabani was also asked about a drone strike this week on the Khor Mor gas field, one of Iraq's largest, which has left almost 70 percent of Iraqi Kurdistan without normal power. He said Iranian officials had assured him they were not behind it. "Iran has guaranteed me that it was not by their bidding or doing," he said, adding that the attack needed a serious investigation.

Iraqi Kurdistan has no air defences, and the last US troops left Erbil in September. "Either provide us with certain systems, or allow us to purchase our own," Talabani said. "We are in a grey area."

Talabani spoke as the Kurdish region reels from a political rift: his PUK withdrew from the regional parliament this week, which he called the region's "single largest political crisis", leaving it effectively with "two administrations".

Sources: Middle East Eye, The Insight International