Foreign minister says the ‘books are not closed’ on Suleimani’s death
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has upped the ante in the stand-off with America by demanding compensation for the country’s current hardships from Washington before entering negotiations.
Lashing out at President Donald Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran as an alternative to the 2015 nuclear deal, Mr Zarif said the “damages” inflicted on Iran was wrong.
“They have to be corrected,” he said, speaking to a forum organised by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. “Compensate us for our losses.”
Mr Trump’s officials said last week that all sanctions removed from Iran under the agreement had snapped back into place as a result of non-compliance by Tehran. In the run up to the US presidential election in November, Mr Zarif said Tehran would not take a different tack if Democratic contender Joe Biden triumphed. “A sign of good faith is not to try to renegotiate what has already been negotiated,” he declared.
The foreign minister also warned Washington that Tehran had not dropped the threats of retaliation issued after the assassination of the Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani in January. He described the general, who was killed in a US air strike, as a national hero and said “the books are not closed” on the matter.
He signalled dual nationals in the country’s jails were on the bargaining block by telling a think tank meeting that Tehran wants a negotiated prisoner swap.
“I repeat we can exchange all prisoners, period,” he said in an online address to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Relatives of the Iranian-American father and son Baquer and Siamak Namazi used the run up to the annual UN General Assembly meetings, which start this week, to issue a new appeal for their freedom. But Navy veteran Michael White, detained since 2018, returned home in June as part of a deal in which the US allowed an Iranian-American physician Majid Taheri to visit Iran. White said he contracted the coronavirus while in detention.
Washington and Tehran also completed a prisoner exchange in which Iran freed Xiyue Wang, who had been held for three years on spying charges, in return for Massoud Suleimani , who faced charges of contravening US sanctions on Iran.
All along, Tehran denies it holds people on political grounds, and has mostly accused its foreign prisoners of espionage.
Content retrieved from: https://www.thenational.ae/world/iran-s-zarif-demands-us-compensation-before-any-new-talks-1.1081226.