Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ensured Iran's lawmakers that bilateral talks with the US government are "not an option in principle," and that Iran's answer to offers by mediators for such negotiations "has always been and will continue to be negative."
During his address to the Iranian parliament Sept. 3, Rouhani moved to clarify his earlier comments that he believed had been "misinterpreted" as willing to have a dialogue with his US counterpart, Donald Trump. Rouhani did not, however, shut all the doors for diplomacy, noting that if the Americans lifted all sanctions, they could rejoin meetings involving Iran and the other remaining signatories to the nuclear deal, namely the UK, France, Germany, China and Russia. Talks between negotiators from those nations as well as the United States culminated in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, which was scrapped by the Trump administration in May 2018.
