No plan to interfere with US polls: Zarif

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is denying his country would interfere with the upcoming US presidential election and says his government doesn’t have a preference in the race.

In an interview to air on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Zarif also accuses the US of initiating a cyber war with his country and warns that “any war the United States starts it won’t be able to finish.”

The interview took place in New York, which Zarif visited this past week to attend meetings at the United Nations. NBC provided a partial transcript on Saturday.

When “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd noted that US intelligence included Iran among the countries attempting to interfere with the US election, Zarif responded, “We don’t have a preference in your election to intervene in that election. We don’t interfere in the internal affairs of another country,” Zarif said later. “But there is a cyber war going on.”

The Iranian official cited Stuxnet, a computer virus that is widely believed to be a joint creation of the US and Israel and is blamed for disrupting thousands of Iranian centrifuges in an effort to damage its nuclear programme.

“The United States started that cyber war, with attacking our nuclear facilities in a very dangerous, irresponsible way that could’ve killed millions of people. You remember Stuxnet?” Zarif said.

He added: “So there is a cyber war ... and Iran is engaged in that cyber war. But the United — any war that the United States starts, it won’t be able to finish.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s oil minister told the petroleum industry to be on alert to physical and cyber attacks, amid heightened tensions with the United States in the Gulf region.

US media reports have said Washington was considering possible cyber attacks against Iran after the Sept.14 attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil sites, which US officials blamed on Tehran. Iran has denied the charge.

“All companies and facilities of the oil industry should be fully alert to physical and cyber threats as sanctions target the petroleum industry,” Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said in a statement, carried by the Oil Ministry’s news agency SHANA.

Reports on social media had said there was a cyber-attack on some petrochemical and other companies in Iran on Sept.21, although a state body in charge of cyber security denied there had been a “successful” attack.

Agencies