Globe Trot: Iran uninterested in a coalition to fight ISIS

MIDDLE EAST: Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States is open to private communications with Iran about the devolving security crisis in Iraq, but Iran’s supreme leader doesn’t seem interested: In a post on his personal website, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed U.S. efforts to build a coalition to combat the terror group ISIS as “absurd, hollow, and biased.”

Khamenei accuses the United States of battling ISIS as a pretext to attack Syria—Iran’s main ally in the Middle East.

The ayatollah’s remarks come as Kerry and other world leaders meet in Paris to discuss a plan to confront ISIS. The agenda gained urgency over the weekend as ISIS militants released a video showing the beheading of a third Westerner—British aid worker David Haines.

Haines was a 44-year-old father of two children, and had delivered aid in war-torn areas like Syria, Croatia, and South Sudan. His family said Haines “helped whoever needed help, regardless of race, creed, or religion.”

Pundits continue to debate the threat ISIS (also known as ISIL) poses to the U.S. homeland, but U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel offered a chilling statistic in an interview with CNN earlier this month: “We are aware of over 100 U.S. citizens who have U.S. passports who are fighting in the Middle East with ISIL forces,” he said. “There may be more, we don’t know.”

MORE BENGHAZI: A former State Department worker dropped a political bombshell, as a U.S. House committee prepares for hearings on the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Former Deputy Secretary Assistant Raymond Maxwell claims a group of Hillary Clinton’s confidants engaged in a secret operation to “separate” damaging documents from other materials before they were turned over to a panel investigating security lapses during the Benghazi attack.

FREE SCOTLAND?: Scottish citizens are set to vote this week on whether to separate from the United Kingdom. The referendum on Thursday will determine whether Scotland will become an independent nation for the first time in 307 years. Polls show a close vote, and NBC News offers 10 things to know about the upcoming referendum.

LONDON: Meanwhile, cab drivers in London have more on their minds than Scottish independence. A fascinating National Geographic piece (including maps) shows what it takes to become a cabbie in the British capital: Drivers sometimes study for five years to memorize the “25,000 streets, roads, avenues, courts, lanes, crescents, places, mews, yards, hills, and alleys that lie within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross.”

WORLD has published a list of aid agencies assisting displaced Christians in Iraq.