Iran sticks to its guns: No room for talks with Trump
Iran's president has once again ruled out dialog with his US counterpart amid mixed signals from the White House. Yet third-party mediation remains an option both sides seemingly favor.
"Although I personally support dialog and diplomacy, I flatly reject it under the current circumstances," said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in a clear message that the Islamic Republic's stance toward the idea of talks with the administration of US President Donald Trump remained unchanged.
Rouhani said "five world leaders" had approached him to help defuse Tehran-Washington tensions during his visit to New York for the UN General Assembly in September 2018. "But today's conditions are by no means fit for negotiations," he added, noting that "steadfastness and resistance" are Iran's options, echoing a similar view earlier expressed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Rouhani made the remarks shortly before Trump's latest tweet on Iran in which he denied media reports that his administration was going the extra mile to bring the Islamic Republic to the negotiating table: "Iran will call us if and when they are ever ready."
Picking up on a response from Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to an earlier threat by Trump, Iranian media outlets wrote in volumes to fire back at the US president, trying to give him a history lesson on how ancient Persia stood the test of time. On the front page of Reformist daily Hamdeli, a cartoon of a screaming Trump struck attention. His rhetoric, according to the paper, was but an "empty threat." Printing a picture of Trump in the form of a melting iceberg, hard-line Javan wrote about the melting down of Trump's "warmongering."
