Summary

TEHRAN, Sept 21 — Iran’s top negotiator said today that Tehran had conveyed to Washington through mediators its conditions for ending its blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The two foes are locked in a stalemate, months into the conflict that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February. Tehran has maintained a stranglehold on the strait, a vital shipping route for the world’s oil and gas, while Washington is pushing its own campaign to choke the Islamic republic’s ports and economy. “Our messages and the explanation of our conditions have been clearly conveyed to the other party through mediators,” said Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has acted as chief negotiator in talks to end the war. “As long as the conditions are not met… and the US commitments are not honoured, it will be impossible to return to the situation from before the negotiations and to an open strait,” he added, according to state television. Mohsen Rezaei, the head of Iran’s supreme national security council, had said on Saturday that the Islamic republic had conveyed its conditions to the US via mediator Qatar. “Our conditions are an end to the war on all fronts, the release of our frozen funds and an end to the naval blockade,” he said, in an interview with Al Jazeera. He warned that the US would face an Iran that was better prepared than at the start of the war. “We will confront America with greater force, and with more numerous and more painful strikes,” he said, singling out US bases and US commercial interests in the region as targets for an Iranian military and economic response to any US strike. “We are prepared for a decisive war.” The Iranian security chief said in the interview that Iran had increased the speed of its hypersonic missiles “from Mach 6 to Mach 10”, as well as improved its air defences and developed “electronic warfare systems”. “Therefore should war break out again, US ships, unless they withdraw from the Indian Ocean, will be subject to attack,” he said. Iranian authorities have said that mediator Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi will travel to Tehran on Sunday for talks. Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya central military command, meanwhile, issued a threat against the United States on Sunday, in a statement carried by state television. “We warn that if the US makes a mistake in dealing with Islamic Iran, all of that country’s bases and interests in the region will become the target of continuous, effective and painful attacks, without any limit or restraint,” it said. — AFP