Iran sends top diplomat to UN summit as Persian Gulf tensions mount
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Abbas Mousavi told state-run news IRNA that FM Javad Zarif landed in New York on Saturday.
He will attend the annual meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). As one of the six principal UN organs, it is headed by Inga Rhonda King of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Nations will have an “unprecedented opportunity to talk to each other and learn from each other," King said Tuesday.
"This is a global moment where we are all together," she detailed. “We need to use it to its utmost… [and] actively interact with each other. Let us all profit from it," she said.
The English-speaking Iranian Foreign Minister often uses visits to the United States to garner the attention of Western media.
Zarif will then travel to Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia for bilateral meetings, according to IRNA.
Following an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Wednesday, Zarif tweeted that the United States "punishes all who observe" the JCPOA.
Iran announced earlier this month that it has exceeded production limits set out in the nuclear deal of 300 kilograms of 3.67 percent purity uranium and is can achieve higher levels of enrichment.
Zarif added that the United States "has no standing to raise JCPOA" issues and "Iran’s actions are lawful."
Iran maintains all of its nuclear and atomic research is for peaceful means such as energy production and medicine. It argues, like any other country, it has a legitimate international right to pursue such ends, noting it was the United States that first pulled out of the nuclear deal three years after its agreement in 2018.
Tehran's energy-dependent economy is heavily dependent on other co-signers of the deal which have previously have purchased Iranian petroleum derivatives, namely natural gas like Germany, Russia, and China.
Zarif's visit comes as the United States has floated the idea of an international naval alliance to secure commercial shipping lanes near the strategic Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.
"[Y]ou see them [Iran] now acting out in the ways that you just described. And so we are now building out a global coalition to ensure that those who want to simply do what every nation should be permitted to do, to transit through international waterways unimpeded, we’re building out a global coalition to deliver that outcome," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with America First on Friday.
The British Royal Navy announced on Friday it was moving up the timetable for HMS Montrose, a frigate, to be replaced with the larger HMS Duncan destroyer.
On July 11, the British Navy said it prevented three Iranian paramilitary vessels from preventing the passage of a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) denied the accusations.
On July 4, British Royal Marines and authorities from Spain seized an oil tanker near the Strait of Gibraltar believed to be carrying 2 million barrels of Iranian oil bound for Syria — a breach of EU sanctions on Syria.
The administration of President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), last year.
Successive rounds of US sanctions have targeted the Iranian economy and perceived malign influence in the Middle East. Notably, Iranian oil exports have dropped, testing the Iranian regime and its people.