Iran’s Rouhani refuses to meet Trump until all sanctions are lifted

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said he has no interest in talking with Donald Trump as long as US sanctions on Tehran stay in place. Trump floated the idea of meeting Rouhani at the G7 summit.

During the G7 event in France on Monday, Trump said he would be ready to meet Rouhani “if the circumstances were right.” For such a meeting to happen, Tehran has to “be a good player” and complete a laundry list of demands, including abandoning its ballistic missiles program, the president stressed. He added that there is a “really good chance” that he would hold talks with Rouhani sometime in the future.

Rouhani, however, said that he is not interested in sitting down with Trump unless the US scraps all sanctions first.

The US should act by lifting all illegal, unjust and unfair sanctions imposed on Iran.

The Iranian leader added that productive talks are “impossible” unless Washington “respects the rights of the Iranian people.”

Officials in Tehran have been saying that they are open to dialogue with Washington but only “on an equal footing.”

The standoff between Iran and the US began escalating last year after the US unilaterally left the 2015 deal on the Iranian nuclear program, known as the JCPOA. Trump accused the Iranians of secretly violating the agreement. Iran denied this, and its fulfillment of the JCPOA was confirmed by the nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In May, Iran started scaling down its commitments under the deal. However, Tehran said it will reverse this decision if the EU, which is also a signatory to the JCPOA, provides some relief from US sanctions.

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