Iranian official calls on West to scrap nuclear arms before any missile talks
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DUBAI - Iran will not negotiate over its ballistic missiles until the United States and Europe dismantle nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, a top Iranian military official said on Saturday.
Separately, Iran confirmed that the Iranian foreign minister had met his former US counterpart John Kerry on the sidelines of a Munich meeting last month. The New Yorker magazine earlier reported that Kerry had urged Tehran not to abandon a 2015 nuclear deal, despite tensions with the administration of US President Donald Trump.
While Iran has accepted curbs on its nuclear work - which it says is for purely peaceful purposes - it has repeatedly refused to discuss its missile programme, something the United States and European countries have called for.
"The condition for negotiating Iran's missiles is the destruction of the nuclear weapons and long-range missiles of the United States and Europe," Iranian Armed Forces spokesman Masoud Jazayeri was quoted by the state news agency IRNA as saying.
Iran says its missile programme is defensive, and that it is not related to Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers which led to the lifting of sanctions against the country.
