Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki blamed Washington for the surge of instability in the Middle East, the Islamic republic's Fars news agency said on Tuesday.

The statement came as an apparent response to U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's condemnation on Monday of Iranian internal policies.

"They [the U.S. authorities] have been captured by their own military doctrine, and have actually ignored the real situation in the region," the Iranian foreign minister was quoted by the news agency as saying.

Speaking in Qatar's capital, Doha, Clinton said Iran "is moving toward a military dictatorship" with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps assuming ever greater political, military and economic power. She said Iran's nuclear program required new sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Mottaki said "the U.S. has a wrong approach toward problems in the Middle East," which is a continuation of the country's "earlier declared wrong policies."

Mottaki said Washington acted as a "puppeteer" toward Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Afghanistan rather than resolving the actual issues.

"We regret that Clinton lives in a virtual world trying to conceal facts about Washington's real intentions in order to distract the public opinion through fake words," he said.

He said the U.S. secretary of state and other top politicians should "become realists, conceive realities of the region" and "allow nations to decide for themselves in their own way."

Iran's recent move to begin enriching uranium to 20% drew stinging criticism from the West. U.S. President Barack Obama said last week Washington and its allies would begin developing "significant" new sanctions against Tehran.

Western powers fear the Islamic republic's nuclear program is aimed at building nuclear weapons, while Tehran insists it needs enriched uranium for civilian power generation.

Obama also praised Russia's "forward-leaning" statements on the issue after Russia's security chief Nikolai Patrushev said Iran's actions meant that fears by Western powers over the nature of its nuclear program were "reasonable."

MOSCOW, February 16 (RIA Novosti)