PARIS, France: Iran should make a deal with the United States to end the war by offering to curb its nuclear programme and reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for sanctions relief, a former Iranian foreign minister said.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, who served as foreign minister from 2013-2021, claimed in an op-ed for American journal Foreign Affairs that Tehran had the “upper hand” in the conflict against the US and Israel, but argued Iran needed to stop the war to prevent the loss of more civilian lives and damage to infrastructure.
“Iran should use its upper hand not to keep fighting but to declare victory and make a deal that both ends this conflict and prevents the next one,” Zarif said in the piece published late on Thursday.
“It should offer to place limits on its nuclear programme and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions -- a deal Washington wouldn´t take before but might accept now,” he added.
Iran should also be prepared to accept a mutual “nonaggression pact” with the United States, as well as economic relations, he said. Tehran and Washington have had no diplomatic ties since shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Zarif, one of the architects of the now moribund 2015 deal over the Iranian nuclear programme, is seen as a relative moderate within the Islamic republic elite, but has no official post in the current government.
However this is one of the first times during this conflict that a high profile figure in Iran has called for a deal and an end to the war, with top military and political officials urging daily for fighting to continue until the US is defeated.
US President Donald Trump has evoked ongoing talks with Tehran without giving details but also threatened to send the country “back to the stone ages” if it fails to agree terms.
“As an Iranian, outraged by Donald Trump´s reckless aggression and crude insults, yet proud of our armed forces and resilient people, I am torn about publishing this peace-plan in Foreign Affairs,” Zarif wrote in English on X Friday.
“Yet I´m convinced that war must end on terms consistent with Iran´s national interests,” he added.
Meanwhile, dozens of international law experts in the US have signed an open letter saying that American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes, after President Donald Trump reiterated his threats this week to strike Iran’s power and desalination plants.
Trump, who has previously offered shifting timelines and objectives for the war, said in a televised speech on Wednesday that the war could escalate if Iran did not give in to Washington’s terms, with strikes on its energy and oil infrastructure possible.
Over 100 international law experts in the US, including from schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of California, said in the letter released on Thursday that the conduct of US forces and statements by senior US officials “raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes.”
“The letter particularly noted a mid-March comment from Trump where he said the US may conduct strikes on Iran “just for fun.” It also cited comments from Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth from early March in which he said the US does not fight with “stupid rules of engagement.”
