Iran’s former top diplomat urges deal with US to end war

PARIS: Iran should make a deal with the United States to end the war by offering to curb its nuclear programme and reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for sanctions relief, a former Iranian foreign minister said.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, who served as foreign minister from 2013-2021, claimed in an op-ed for American journal Foreign Affairs that Tehran had the “upper hand” in the conflict against the US and Israel, but argued Iran needed to stop the war to prevent the loss of more civilian lives and damage to infrastructure.

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“Iran should use its upper hand not to keep fighting but to declare victory and make a deal that both ends this conflict and prevents the next one,” Zarif said in the piece published late Thursday.

“It should offer to place limits on its nuclear program and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions – a deal Washington wouldn’t take before but might accept now,” he added.

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Iran should also be prepared to accept a mutual “nonaggression pact” with the United States, as well as economic relations, he said. Tehran and Washington have had no diplomatic ties since shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Zarif, one of the architects of the now moribund 2015 deal over the Iranian nuclear programme, is seen as a relative moderate within the Islamic republic elite, but has no official post in the current government.

However this is one of the first times during this conflict that a high profile figure in Iran has called for a deal and an end to the war, with top military and political officials urging daily for fighting to continue until the US is defeated.

US President Donald Trump has evoked ongoing talks with Tehran without giving details but also threatened to send the country “back to the stone ages” if it fails to agree terms.

“As an Iranian, outraged by Donald Trump’s reckless aggression and crude insults, yet proud of our armed forces and resilient people, I am torn about publishing this peace-plan in Foreign Affairs,” Zarif wrote in English on X Friday.

“Yet I’m convinced that war must end on terms consistent with Iran’s national interests,” he added.

Zarif in the Foreign Affairs piece warned that “although continuing to fight the United States and Israel might be psychologically satisfying, it will lead only to the further destruction of civilian lives and infrastructure”.