Oman’s Foreign Minister, Yousuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, said in Iran on Tuesday that the United States seeks to reduce tensions in the region, the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.
The Omani official expressed condolences to his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, for the death of top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed last week in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad Airport.
Oman maintains friendly ties with both the United States and Iran, and sometimes acts as a link between the two countries.
Separately, Germany decided to remove some of its military units from Iraq to other countries in the region because of security concerns, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Slovakia said it was temporarily removing its seven soldiers from the country as part of a NATO training mission.
Approximately 30 of the 120 German troops in Iraq are being redeployed to Jordan and Kuwait, the German government told parliament in a letter on Monday, according to the report, which added that the estimated remaining 90 German troops are based in Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.
Meanwhile, in an interview on CNN, Zarif accused America of “state terrorism.”
“This is an act of aggression against Iran and amounts to an armed attack against Iran, and we will respond,” he said. “But we will respond proportionally, not disproportionately. We will respond lawfully; we are not lawless people like President Trump.”
