The United States rejected a request by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to visit Iran\u2019s United Nations ambassador in a New York hospital where he is being treated for cancer, the US State Department and Iranian UN mission said.<\/p>\n
A US State Department spokesperson said Zarif\u2019s request would be granted if Iran released one of several American citizens it had detained, Reuters reported on Saturday.<\/p>\n
In July, the United States imposed tight travel restrictions on Zarif before a visit that month to the United Nations, as well as on Iranian diplomats and their families living in New York, which Zarif described as \u201cbasically inhuman.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unless they receive prior approval from Washington, they are only allowed to travel within a small area of Manhattan, Queens and to and from John F. Kennedy airport.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s UN mission spokesman Alireza Miryousefi said Iran\u2019s UN Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi was being treated for cancer in a hospital not far away in Manhattan\u2019s Upper East Side neighborhood. Zarif is in New York for the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran has wrongfully detained several US citizens for years, to the pain of their families and friends they cannot freely visit,\u201d the State Department spokesperson said. \u201cWe have relayed to the Iranian mission that the travel request will be granted if Iran releases a US citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a news conference in New York on Thursday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran was open to talking about prisoner swaps but that the ball was in Washington\u2019s court after Iran\u2019s release of a Lebanese man with US permanent residency in June.<\/p>\n
Commenting on Washington\u2019s move on Saturday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi\u00a0criticized the US for taking humanitarian issues \u201chostage\u201d for political causes, as quoted by IRNA news agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States rejected a request by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to visit Iran\u2019s United Nations ambassador in a New York hospital where he is being treated for cancer, the US State Department and Iranian UN mission said. A US State Department spokesperson said Zarif\u2019s request would be granted if Iran released one …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":17298,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news-and-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17299,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17297\/revisions\/17299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}