Iran must not repeat Libyan mistake of trusting US – ex-Gaddafi minister (VIDEO)

Iran should not repeat the mistakes of Libya, which paid a heavy price for trusting the West, the North African country’s former information minister, Moussa Ibrahim, has warned ahead of the talks between delegations from Washington and Tehran.

The first direct meeting between the sides since the US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28 is expected to take place in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Saturday, according to the White House.

The American team will be headed by Vice President J.D. Vance, and will also include special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Tehran hasn’t announced the lineup of its delegation yet, but reports claim that it could be led by parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

In an interview with RT on Friday, Ibrahim – a former cabinet member under longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was deposed and murdered in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 – said that “both parties come to these negotiations with different ideas about peace and conflict.”

“I believe the Iranians are genuine in their attempt to find a solution… For the Americans, it is not a diplomacy of peace or conflict-resolution, but rather escalation control,” he said.

For Washington, it is “actually very beneficial to continue to wreak havoc in the region to make sure that any rising regional powers are under control... that the region is never united,” the ex-minister, who now serves as executive secretary of the African Legacy Foundation, insisted.

”The Americans come to these negotiations hoping to find a way to keep the conflict going, but not as escalated as it was in the last few weeks, so they would keep their face and find other ways – economic, political, diplomatic – to punish the Iranians and their friends in the region,” he added.

Ibrahim advised the authorities in Tehran “to be very careful, not to believe the American plans for peace and never to give up sovereignty and deterrence” during the talks.

”Libya was indeed a very strong African country, very stable, but because we believed for once that maybe we could have some friendly relations with the West… we paid a very heavy price,” he said, urging Iran to learn a lesson from this.