Iran says minister's missile remarks meant to challenge US

Iran says remarks by the country's foreign minister about Iran's missile program possibly being up for negotiations with the US meant to challenge Washington's arms sales policy to the region — and were not meant to indicate readiness by Tehran for any such talks. The Foreign Ministry's spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, tweeted late on Tuesday that Mohammad Javad Zarif's comments "threw the ball into the US court while challenging America's arms sales" to its Mideast allies.

Zarif had said in an NBC News interview that if the U.S. wants to talk about Iran's missiles, "they need first to stop selling all these weapons, including missiles, to our region." Iran has long rejected negotiations over its missile program. Iran's mission to the United Nations also described Zarif's comments as purely "hypothetical."