Cameron and Rouhani Hold First Meeting Since 1979

British Prime Minister David Cameron held talks with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday at the United Nations, the first meeting between the countries’ leaders since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, AFP reported.

The meeting took place at the British mission office at the United Nations as the General Assembly got underway, according to the report.

Rouhani posted a photograph of himself smiling as he shook hands with Cameron.

The British government says a key priority at the largest diplomatic gathering in the world is building broad-based support for the new government in Iraq and international action to confront the “Islamic State” (IS) in Iraq and Syria.

Britain resumed its ties with Iran last year, after cutting them off in 2011, when hundreds of Islamist students ransacked the British embassy as well as the British ambassador's residence in north Tehran.

In November of 2013, Cameron became the first UK prime minister in more than a decade to call an Iranian president when he phoned President Hassan Rouhani to discuss Iran's nuclear program.

Rouhani said on Tuesday that airstrikes by the U.S. and a group of allies against IS targets in Syria are illegal, adding military action could only be justified if authorized by the United Nations Security Council or if the measures were conducted with the consent of the Syrian government.

The comments came hours after the Pentagon confirmed that the U.S. had begun airstrikes against Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria.

"These bombings do not have any legal standing so we can interpret them as an attack," Rouhani told journalists on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly.

Rouhani condemned IS and described them as "barbarians," but said Iran should lead any coalition in the fight against the group that has seized control of swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of the Rosh Hashanah holiday in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)