Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tuesday that there would be no more talks about prisoner exchanges with the US following the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
At least five Americans remain imprisoned in Iran, but Zarif said they would stay that way for the foreseeable future.
“We had proposed a universal exchange of all prisoners. I don’t think at this time we can discuss those issues. We have to deal with the present issue at hand, unfortunately,” he told NPR during an interview in Tehran.
Since Suleimani’s killing, several relatives of those imprisoned worried that negotiating the release of their family members would be more difficult
“I urge both American and Iranian leaders to engage in discussions on further exchanges that would benefit both countries and at the same time bring my family home,” Babak Namazi, whose dual-nationality brother and father have been imprisoned in Iran for four years, told the Los Angeles Times.
Namazi’s brother was busted in Tehran in October 2015 on espionage charges that Babak has called bogus.
Their father was arrested after he traveled to Tehran in February 2016 to try to win his son’s release, the paper reported. Both have been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The last prisoner exchange came last month when President Trump anounced the release of an American student, Xiyue Wang, from an Iranian prison after three years of captivity via tweet.
“Taken during the Obama Administration, returned during the Trump Administration,” Trump wrote. “Thank you to Iran on a very fair negotiation. See, we can make a deal together!”
Wang was released in a prisoner exchange that sent a biologist who was accused of violating US trade sanctions back to Iran. The deal was brokered by Swiss diplomats, administration officials said.
The Islamic Republic’s top diplomat also asserted that “all limits” on centrifuges used to enrich uranium “are now suspended,” but added that Tehran was still complying with other aspects of the nuke agreement that Trump pulled the US out of.
But Zarif, who was just denied a visa to come to the US to address the UN, claimed that Iran was ready to rejoin the pact if other signatories, including the US, recommit to it.
“We made it very clear that we are ready to go back to full compliance the minute they start complying with their own,” he said.
He also scoffed at the commander-in-chief’s argument, supported by most US allies, that Iran wants to become a nuclear power.
“If we wanted to build a nuclear bomb, we would … have done it a long time ago,” Zarif said.
“Iran does not want a nuclear bomb, does not believe that nuclear bombs create security for anybody. And we believe it’s time for everybody to disarm rather than to arm.”