Iran rips US for barring foreign minister from NY hospital visit

TEHRAN, Iran — 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. The U.S. State Department said it would allow the hospital visit request only if Iran released one of several U.S. citizens it 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.