SULAIMANI (ESTA) — In leaked audio recordings made public Sunday, the Iranian foreign minister said the country’s diplomatic efforts had been damaged by the interventions of military men such as Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani, killed in a U.S. drone attack in Baghdad last year.
The audio, which was released by the London-based Iran International news channel, came from a three-hour interview with Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, according to Washington Post and Financial Times.
“Many diplomatic prices that we paid were because the [military] field was a priority,” Zarif said in a recent interview recorded on February 24 as part of an “oral history” research scheme that was leaked on Sunday, Financial Times reported.
“We paid for the [military] field but the [military] field did not pay for us,” the FT quoted him as saying.
Zarif further said Soleimani, who headed the elite Quds Force, used to tell him what to do in his negotiations with foreign countries.
“Almost every time I went for talks, it was Martyr Soleimani who said: ‘I want you to get this advantage, this point’,” Zarif was quoted as saying.
“He said: ‘When you go to talk to Lavrov, get 1, 2, 3, 4.” … If I had said don’t use, for instance, Iran Air [civilian] planes on the Tehran-Syrian route [for military purpose], he would not have accepted,” Zarif noted.
On Monday, spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry Saeed Khatibzadeh called the leak “illegal” and said the conversation was intended only for “historical” purposes, Washington Post reported.
He further said the conversation showed that “Iranian officials are dynamic and transparent in their expertise.”
Although Iran considers Russia an ally, Zarif alleged on the tapes that Moscow had tried to sabotage the nuclear deal.
