Iran slams US for barring Zarif from New York visit

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran slammed the United States on Saturday for what it called an “inhumane” decision to bar its foreign minister, who was attending the U.N. summit meetings in New York, from visiting a hospitalized Iranian diplomat in the city.

U.S. authorities were not allowing Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to visit U.N. ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi, who was undergoing cancer treatment in a New York hospital. In July, the U.S. restricted Zarif ’s movement to just six blocks in New York.

The U.S. State Department said it would allow the hospital visit request only if Iran released one of several U.S. citizens it currently has “wrongfully detained.”

The official IRNA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as saying the U.S. had taken humanitarian issues “hostage” for political causes.

Late on Saturday, Zarif tweeted that he had communicated with Ravanchi by video call.

“Thanks to technology, I was able to see and talk to my friend of 40 years and our U.N. ambassador Ravanchi, who is in hospital here in New York only a few blocks away,” he said.

The spat comes amid heightened tension between Tehran and Washington following U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision over a year ago to unilaterally pull out of a nuclear deal with Iran. The U.S. has imposed sanctions that have kept Iran from selling its oil abroad and have crippled its economy. Iran has since begun breaking terms of the deal.

The tensions have included seizures of oil tankers at sea. On Friday, Iran released a British-flagged oil tanker it had seized in July as it passed through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20 percent of all oil passes.