Iran’s diplomatic efforts had been damaged by the interventions of military men such as assassinated Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani, the country’s foreign minister and nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a leaked recording.
“Many diplomatic prices that we paid were because the [military] field was a priority,” Zarif said in a secret interview recorded on February 24 as part of an “oral history” research scheme that was leaked on Sunday. “We paid for the [military] field but the [military] field did not pay for us.”
He said Soleimani — who ran Iran’s foreign military operations in the Middle East and was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020 — used to tell him what to do in his negotiations with foreign dignitaries.