"If there is a war, no one will be safe in our region," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said of the consequences of a possible US-Iran military conflict in an interview with the BBC in New York, where he is to attend an annual meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council. "But let us try to avoid one," Zarif added, making it clear that Iran's response to aggression "will not be blind."

The comments were the latest reaction to the recent all-time high US-Iran escalation in the Persian Gulf, which has seen American military reinforcements and the downing of a sophisticated $131 million US drone by Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps near the strategic Strait of Hormuz — the pathway hosting a third of the globe's maritime oil traffic. 

But Zarif also tried to keep the door for dialogue open with President Donald Trump's administration, which started to reinstate draconian sanctions on the Islamic Republic after scrapping the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018. "Once those sanctions are lifted … the room for negotiation is wide open. … It is the United States that left the bargaining table, and they're always welcome to return," he said in a separate interview with NBC News July 15.

Zarif landed in New York only a few days after Washington apparently decided to hang back from an earlier plan to blacklist the US-educated, media-friendly Iranian diplomat. Yet, according to the US State Department, a series of tight restrictions have been imposed on Zarif's travel, effectively barring him from any place other than John F. Kennedy Airport, the UN headquarters, the Iranian mission's premises and the residence of its representative there. The US decision has already triggered a reaction from the United Nations, which "conveyed its concerns to the host country."