Spokesman: US letter to Iran not seen as new development in ties
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that the United States' recent letter to Iran does not herald any resumption or even any new development in Tehran-Washington Ties.
"No new development has happened with regard to Iran-US ties," Mehmanparast told reporters in his weekly press conference in Tehran on Tuesday.
Iran on Monday confirmed receiving a letter from the US on the Strait of Hormuz.
The United States and Iran broke diplomatic relations in April 1980, after Iranian students seized the United States' espionage center at its embassy in Tehran. The two countries have had tense relations ever since.
As regards Iran's reply to the US letter, the foreign ministry presser stated," A reply will be sent if Tehran finds it necessary."
On Monday, Mehmanparast had said that Iran has received a US message regarding the Strait of Hormuz via three different channels.
"The US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice had handed a letter to Iran's Ambassador to the UN Mohammad Khazaee; the Swiss Ambassador to Tehran, Livia Leu Agosti, also conveyed the same thing; and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani delivered the same message to Iranian officials," he said on Sunday.
The US letter follows threats by Iran last month to shut off the Strait of Hormuz - the world's most important oil shipping lane - if new US and EU sanctions over its nuclear program halted Iranian oil exports.
Then the United States said it would not allow Iran to block the Strait, calling it a "red line" for the US military.
In reply, Lieutenant Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Hossein Salami dismissed the US warning over the closure of the strategic strait, and stressed that powerful Iran acts on its own and never asks for anyone's permission to carry out what it desires.
"The US is not in a position" to affect Iran's decisions, Salami told FNA late in December. "Iran does not ask permission to implement its own defensive strategies."
Meantime, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey acknowledged that Iran is able to close the Strait of Hormuz.
"They've invested in capabilities that could, in fact, for a period of time block the Strait of Hormuz," Dempsey said in an interview aired on Sunday on the CBS "Face the Nation" program.
