'Iran has not participated in any activity in any populated area and we will never do so in the future,' Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera English.

'We condemn any attack against civilians, no matter who does it; we condemn anybody using chemical weapons; we condemn any government but at the same time, we condemn groups who use people as human shield,' he noted.

Answering a question about the cause of civil war in Syria, Zarif said that’s the fault of the people who prevented a political settlement in Syria because of an illusion that they could remove Syrian President Basher al-Assad from power.

Iran wanted a political settlement, they refused; they wanted their mercenaries and their foreign fighters, he noted.

Zarif said that there is a government in Syria who has a seat in the UN and those who tried to overthrow that government through the use of Daesh (ISIS) and Nusra are those who have created this mess.

'Nothing justifies war crimes,' he noted while referring to the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam's war crime against Iran during the eight-year imposed war.