MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th August, 2019) Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will visit Japan on Tuesday as part of his Asia tour, during which he will hold talks with his Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in light of the rising tensions between Washington and Tehran, and the former's calls for a maritime coalition in the Persian Gulf.
Zarif will be following up his Sunday trip to Beijing with a meeting with Kono in the Japanese city of Yokohama on Tuesday. The Iranian foreign minister will meet with Abe the following day, but no information about what will be discussed has been disclosed. After Japan, Iran's top diplomat will travel to Malaysia.
US-Iran relations have worsened since the United States unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last spring. The United States has since proclaimed it intends to bring down Iran's oil exports to zero and reintroduced sanctions on almost all major sectors of the middle Eastern nation's economy. The situation escalated over recent months following a series of attacks on commercial tankers in the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, for which Washington and its allies have blamed Iran. Tehran has adamantly refuted all accusations.
