Zarif bitterly accused Soleimani of sabotaging diplomacy

Iran’s FM Mohammad Javad Zarif, in an interview last year, accused the assassinated Al Qods chief Qasem Soleimani of repeatedly undermining him.. “In the Islamic Republic the military field rules,” Zarif said. “I have sacrificed diplomacy for the military field rather than the field servicing diplomacy,” he said. Zarif said that he was often kept in the dark about security matters, and that “to his astonishment,” former US Secretary of State John Kerry told him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times.

Zarif also criticized the late general Soleimani for allowing Russian planes to fly over Iran on their way to bomb Syria. Soleimani traveled to Moscow, he claimed, to “demolish our achievement” and try to stop Russia’s support for the nuclear deal struck with world powers. A copy of the interview was leaked to the UK-based, Saudi-owned Persian language news channel Iran International.