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US Senator Murphy met with Iran FM Zarif last week: Source
A US Senator held secret meetings with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif last week, according to an unnamed source briefed by the French delegation to the Munich Security Conference, reported the Federalist.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy is the latest Western official to meet Iranian regime officials in the months after Iran shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane that killed all 176 people on board.
Last week, Zarif met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, sparking criticism online. Canadians questioned Trudeau’s seemingly friendly embrace of Zarif following the death of 57 Canadian citizens on the Ukrainian airliner.
“Not a good look to see PM Trudeau with smiling FM Zarif,” tweeted Bessma Momani, a professor of international relations at the University of Waterloo.
https://twitter.com/b_momani/status/1228347927103492097
https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1212913952436445185
In an interview with US news program “Face the Nation,” Murphy said: “We do not generally execute high-level political figures of sovereign nations, in part because we know that that opens a Pandora’s box that may expose American officials to assassination, but also because we know that ultimately that might get more Americans killed, as it likely will in this.”
No Americans have yet died in retaliatory Iranian strikes, but over 100 US troops were found to have traumatic brain injuries after a January 8 Iranian missile attack on an Iraqi military base that held US personnel.
Murphy has also been vocal in his calls for a restrained US approach to Iran and has spoken at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a pro-Iran lobby.
In January, three Republican senators, including Ted Cruz (TX) and Tom Cotton (Ark) asked the US Department of Justice to investigate NIAC, which they believe acts as a “foreign agent of the Islamic Republic.”
source: Lauren Holtmeier
