U.S. President Donald Trump made eight requests for a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rowhani, all of which were rejected, the Iranian leader’s chief of staff said Wednesday.
“When President Rowhani was at the UN General Assembly in New York in 2017, eight inquiries from [Donald] Trump for a bilateral dialogue were received,” Mahmoud Waesi told Iranian news agency ISNA.
“All were turned down, Waesi said.
Rowhani himself has so far not commented on Waesi’s statement.
On May 9,after years of condemning the Iran nuclear deal, Trump dealt a perhaps fatal blow to the accord, declaring it “defective at its core” and announcing his intent to withdraw from the 2015 agreement.
Specifically, the president pledged to reimpose some of the previous U.S. sanctions on Iran, the indispensable step in terminating one of the most contentious arms control agreements in recent history.
The controversy is sure to go on, with the deal’s defenders warning that Trump’s decision could lead to the collapse of U.S. relationships in Europe, spiking oil prices, or even war in the Middle East.
More likely, after all the noise dies down, there will be a new round of arms control negotiations between the United States and Iran.
Every president since the advent of the Islamic Revolution has tried diplomacy with Iran, and the Trump administration may not be different.
Another of the Iran deal’s fatal flaws was the notion that it’s possible to segregate arms control from all other areas of concern with Iran. (Reuters.NAN)
