The two-week ceasefire between Iran, the U.S. and Israel entered its second and last week with Tehran stepping up diplomacy at home and abroad ahead of the pending renewed talks with Washington expected later this week.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held phone calls with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan and the Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares on Tuesday, as well as Omani, Saudi, Qatari, Egyptian and Russian counterparts on Monday (13 April).
Local news media, quoting Foreign Ministry statements, said the talks focused on bilateral ties, the latest regional developments in the wake of U.S.-Israeli aggression, and the Iran-U.S. talks in Pakistan last Saturday and Sunday.
Araghchi and Fidan have been talking in several phone calls in recent days with reports suggesting Turkiye as one of the venues of the upcoming Iran-U.S. talks alongside Pakistan and Switzerland.
In the call with his Spanish counterpart, Iran’s top diplomat appreciated the position of the government and people of Spain in opposing the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran which broke out on 28 February and was halted last week on Tuesday for two weeks.
"Spain's valuable position in defending international law and human values have been noted and praised by the Iranian nation and the international community and will never be forgotten,” Araghchi was quoted saying.
In New York, Iran’s Permission at the United Nations Headquarters in a letter to the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the President of the Security Council (Bahrain) said that physical remains of the weapons used in the Israeli-U.S. attacks in numerous damaged cities confirmed that they were part of the arsenal of some Persian Gulf states.
Amir-Saeed Iravani, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Iran to the United Nations, has officially rejected Bahrain's claims - that it made on behalf of several regional states against Iran - labelling them baseless. Bahrain had said that Iran had launched a continuous wave of "unjustified and hostile" attacks on those countries since the start of the war.
“Based on monitoring data and assessments conducted by the Armed Forces of Iran, the aggressors have repeatedly used the territory and airspace of those states to plan, prepare, arm, and execute illegal military operations against Iran,” read the letter according to the state-owned IRNA news agency.
Meanwhile, Government Spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said that Iran has initially estimated the damage from U.S.-Israeli attacks which lasted for 39 days to be at $270 billion.
She told the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti that demanding war reparations was one of the issues being pursued by Iran's negotiating team in Pakistan.
Preliminary figures of casualties and damages released by the Iranian authorities cite 3,275 civilian deaths including 278 school students, 880 damaged schools, 20 commercial airplanes, and seven airports.
Despite large-scale of war damage, Tehran said it did not ask for international aid and thanked the countries and relief agencies that sent their humanitarian assistance for Iranians.
In the latest development, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its first batch of emergency relief items were delivered to the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS).
“The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has dispatched 171 metric tons of essential relief items to the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS), with five truckloads delivered yesterday (Monday),” according to ICRC-Tehran website.
“This marks the first ICRC shipment to Iran since the latest escalation of hostilities and one of the first cross-border humanitarian deliveries to the country in six weeks,” it added.
It is the eighth day of ceasefire, with unconfirmed reports from Western media sources quoting “informed” anonymous sources about date and venue of the next round of talks between Tehran and Washington.
On the Iranian side, President Masoud Pezeshkian said that while “excessive” demands of the United States led to the failure of talks in Pakistan, Tehran is ready to continue the negotiations with Washington based on international law.
He made the statement in a phone call with the French President Emanuel Macron on Monday, also warning over the escalation of conflict following the U.S. blockade of Iranian southern ports in Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman.
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