NEW YORK, Sept 28 (New York Times): President Hassan Rouhani of Iran said Friday that President Donald Trump had offered to meet with him at the United Nations this week and then lift all sanctions but that Rouhani declined because the "optics" of such a meeting were unacceptable.
Rouhani's assertions, reported on his website as he returned home from the United Nations General Assembly, were quickly disputed by Trump on Twitter.
"Iran wanted me to lift the sanctions imposed on them in order to meet," Trump said. "I said, of course, NO!"
The contradictory narratives added a new twist to the frantic diplomacy that America's allies at the United Nations engaged in while trying to arrange a meeting between Trump and Rouhani, in an effort to halt spiraling tensions between the United States and Iran.
Trump has imposed onerous economic sanctions on Iran since he abandoned the 2015 nuclear agreement last year, calling it "a disaster" that would not deter Iran from making nuclear weapons.
Iran has responded by halting its compliance with some provisions of the agreement while insisting that it would return to compliance - if the sanctions were lifted first and if the United States rejoined the agreement.
Tensions have been further roiled by US and Saudi Arabian accusations that Iran attacked oil facilities in Saudi Arabia on Sept 14 - accusations that Britain, France and Germany have now joined. The Iranians have denied responsibility for the attack and have warned that retaliation would invite war.
Rouhani told a news conference in New York on Thursday as he was about to leave for home that if the Trump administration first dropped all the sanctions, "then negotiations with the US are a possibility."
On Friday, Rouhani said more about what he described as the diplomatic efforts to arrange a meeting with Trump and Iran's response.
"The Americans had sent a message through nearly all European leaders that they are ready to negotiate," Rouhani said, according to his website. "The US's request was for bilateral talks, meaning the two presidents negotiate with each other, and we had rejected this many times."
He said Iran was willing to negotiate with the United States as part of a meeting with the other members of the 2015 nuclear agreement - Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.
"The German chancellor and the UK prime minister and France's president were all in New York, and they were all insisting that this meeting happen and the US saying it would lift all sanctions," Rouhani said.
He said they had discussed which sanctions would be lifted and in what order, and that "the US government said very clearly that it would lift all sanctions."
But Rouhani said that "the optics of this were not the kind of optics that would be acceptable to us."
Such a meeting, he said, would mean that Iran would have been negotiating with the United States "in the atmosphere of maximum pressure and sanctions," which Rouhani has repeatedly said he would not do.
The spokesman for Iran's UN Mission, Alireza Miryousefi, elaborated on Rouhani's response in his own Twitter account, saying that the Iranian president had insisted that the United States would "first have to create the proper environment by removing the poisonous atmosphere of sanctions."
Political analysts who follow Iran said the posturing on both sides that followed the failed diplomacy suggested that Iran was still interested in talking.
"The major hang-up was choreography and sequencing," said Ali Vaez, Iran director for the International Crisis Group. "But the idea is not dead, and the main quid pro quo remains viable."
Rouhani's portrayal of his dealings at the United Nations also seemed partly aimed at countering the appearance of Iran's isolation this year at the international gathering, particularly over the attack on the Saudi oil facilities.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
