In a Wednesday interview, Iran’s Armed Forces Deputy Chief of Staff Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri pointed to recent remarks by former US officials about holding direct negotiations with Iran and said, “The US owes a lot to Iran and it has no choice but to pay its debt (to Iran).”

He pointed to Washington’s engineering of the eight-year Iraqi-imposed war against Iran under Saddam Hussein and the 1988 downing of an Iranian passenger plane, which left 290 people dead, as instances of American crimes committed against Iran.

“During the entire period following the Islamic Revolution and after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the Great Satan (US) has not missed a single moment to hurt our country, and our people will never forget the problems caused by the White House,” Jazayeri said.

A group of former US policymakers and dozens of lawmakers have called on President Barack Obama to consider diplomacy with Tehran after Hassan Rohani is sworn in as Iran’s new president in early August.

In the letter to Obama, the ex-policymakers said the election of Rohani “presents a major potential opportunity" for holding talks with Iran.

The letter has been signed by 29 former officials including the former US ambassador to the United Nations, Thomas Pickering, Anne-Marie Slaughter, a top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Larry Wilkerson, the Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Touching on the Syrian crisis, Jazayeri expressed optimism that the resistance of the Syrian nation would yield result, noting, “The militants will have no choice but withdrawal.”

Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. According to the United Nations, more than 90,000 people have been killed and millions of others displaced in the violence.

Damascus says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

HH/HH