close button
Switch to Iranwire Light?
It looks like you’re having trouble loading the content on this page. Switch to Iranwire Light instead.
Politics

When Rouhani (Almost) Met Trump

September 5, 2022
Faramarz Davar
5 min read
At the 2019 UN General Assembly in New York, a rare opportunity emerged for Iran's Hassan Rouhani to meet US President Donald Trump
At the 2019 UN General Assembly in New York, a rare opportunity emerged for Iran's Hassan Rouhani to meet US President Donald Trump
The would-be meeting was arranged with the assistance of French premier Emmanuel Macron and then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson
The would-be meeting was arranged with the assistance of French premier Emmanuel Macron and then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson

In a new book set shortly to be published in Iran, Without Smoke and Fire and Blood, former president Hassan Rouhani provides an oral history of his eight-year presidency of the Islamic Republic.

Already released parts of the book include an account of when, in 2019, while Rouhani was in New York to attend the US General Assembly, he came very close to a meeting with President Donald Trump. The plan fell apart at the eleventh hour, in Rouhani’s telling, when Trump did not agree to a fairly simple condition set by the Iranian delegation.

 

A Dispute Over Media Strategy

In 2019, it was the French premier Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson who put themselves forward to broker a meeting between Hassan Rouhani and Donald Trump. In a video already shared online, the two urged Rouhani not to let the opportunity slip through his fingers.

Rouhani’s one condition was that the news about the meeting not be announced until after it had taken place: “It was clear to me that Trump is an actor,” he says in his new book. “He was not a normal person. Every moment he was playing a role, and he did it capably. My concern was that if they announced the news [beforehand] the game would be ruined. We said: first the meeting, then the news.”

The proposal was rejected by Trump’s team, who insisted the meeting be covered as it was happening. Rouhani said he was so sure it would go ahead that “our teams were busy consulting with each other. But in the end, we concluded that it was impossible to have a frank and honest conversation with Trump as equals.”

The disclosure of these details of these efforts is important, because Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had expressly forbidden any contact between Islamic Republic officials and their US counterparts.

From Rouhani’s point of view, the meeting could have been a stepping stone on the way to lifting at least some US sanctions on Iran. Upon his return to Iran, the then-president stated publicly on the matter: “I could have arrived at a decision to lift the sanctions. But we had to trust the American president, which was a very difficult thing to do. Perhaps if the Americans had a different president this could have been done and over with by September 23.”

 

The Scuppered Meeting With Obama

In the new oral history, Rouhani also concedes that in 2013 he could also have met President Barack Obama during his first appearance at the UN General Assembly, but there were bigger obstacles at play. The Supreme Leader had unexpectedly agreed to the meeting, provided the US meet Iran’s condition.

Rouhani’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has already stated in his own six-volume treatise on the nuclear negotiations, The Sealed Secret, that on that occasion Iran’s “condition” was Obama accept uranium enrichment by the Islamic Republic.

“Apparently,” Zarif wrote, “in conformance with the talks that [Rouhani] had had with the Exalted Supreme Leader before traveling, he stated: ‘I’ll meet with Mr. Obama only if he recognizes Iran’s right to enrich uranium.”

Three months later the Islamic Republic’s demand was met within the framework of the Geneva interim nuclear agreement. But at least for the time that Rouhani was in New York, the US was unable to unilaterally accept it. “Right up until the moment Dr. Rouhani left American soil,” Zarif sad, “the other party was not ready to recognize the reality.”

On that occasion, Zarif further claimed, Rouhani’s aides had actually begun to prepare for the meeting before speaking to himself or Rouhani. In the end, when plans for a face-to-face discussion fell apart, the Americans then proposed Rouhani and Obama have a phone call instead.

“After a few meetings between the two delegations, the Americans called again and said that Obama was interested in a phone conversation,” Zarif reported. “This time Dr. Rouhani accepted [unconditionally] and a phone number was passed on to them so they could communicate via that number.”

After the historic call on September 27, 2013, however, Ayatollah Khamenei took a different stance, publicly castigating Rouhani at a meeting of military commanders. “The phone conversation,” he said, “was not appropriate in our view.”

 

What Did Rouhani Believe Would Happen?

Before traveling to New York in 2019, Rouhani had announced in multiple speeches that he was ready to sacrifice himself if it served the interests of the Iranian people, and he would meet with anybody necessary to do so. Needless to say, practically the only meeting by Rouhani that could have “sacrificed” his political career was one with Donald Trump, which was strictly prohibited by Ayatollah Khamenei.

It is impossible to speculate on whether such a meeting would have led to the lifting of any sanctions or not. A favorite example mentioned by the Islamic Republic official was the fruitless meeting between Donald Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un that, they said, had only served as a photo opportunity for Trump.

But, in his oral memoirs, Rouhani is adamant that he believed lifting sanctions would have been possible at several points: on his last visit to New York, and also a few months earlier in June 2019, when the then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo visited Tehran. Abe had said that he was conveying a message from Trump to Khamenei.

In that meeting, however, Khamenei told Abe: “I do not consider Trump, as a person, deserving of an exchange of messages with. We will not negotiate with the United States.”

And after Rouhani’s visit to New York in 2019, Khamenei attacked Emmanuel Macron for trying to arrange such a meeting. The French president, he said, was “either a simpleton or Donald Trump’s accomplice”. Despite this uncivil slur, Macron continued his efforts to reduce tensions between the US and the Islamic Republic even after Hassan Rouhani left office.

comments

shauntehonora
shauntehonora
September 21, 2022

Another book for the shelves. You gotta ask yourself how much more fame and attention was created for Trump as a result. He knows this and the highly impressionable will just sit in front of their tvs and phones and soak it up for local gossip - a reason to hand out, over a drink or coffee.

Prisoners

Two LGBT+ Women Sentenced to Death in Iran

September 5, 2022
OstanWire
1 min read
Two LGBT+ Women Sentenced to Death in Iran