TEHRAN: Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has apologized for the leaked comments about assassinated top general Qasem Soleimani, creating a firestorm in the country less than two months before presidential elections.
In an Instagram post, Javad Zarif hoped Soleimani’s family would forgive him. “I hope that the great people of Iran and all the lovers of general Soleimani and especially his great family will forgive me,” he wrote.
Zarif said it was not meant for release. “If I had known that a sentence of it would be made public, I certainly would not have mentioned it as before,” he said in his Instagram post. He also said he will not run for president in the upcoming election.
Iranian Foreign Minister was heard criticizing the country’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the assassinated top general Qasem Soleimani in an audio tape leaked across Iranian media.
In the three-hour interview, Zarif said that the slain commander Soleimani was directing foreign policy and attempting to sabotage the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal signed in 2015 by the US and other world powers.
Zarif’s leaked comments were highly controversial in Iran, where officials mind their words amid a cut-throat political environment that includes the powerful Revolutionary Guard, ultimately overseen by the country’s supreme leader.
General Qassem Soleimani as killed by a US drone strike in 2020. The attack at the time brought the US and Iran to the brink of war. Soleimani’s funeral processions in Iran drew millions of people to the streets.
