Iran’s Rowhani says no talks with Trump unless sanctions lifted

Iranian President Hassan Rowhani has dampened expectations of an imminent meeting with US President Donald Trump, saying talks could only take place once sanctions are lifted.

“If that happens, you could talk about more positive developments,” Rowhani said. Otherwise, he suggested such a summit would be nothing more than a photo op.

“Just taking a few pictures with Hassan Rowhani is not possible,” he said in a speech on Tuesday, a day after Trump said he was willing to meet with his Iranian counterpart to quell sharply mounting tensions.

Trump said at the G7 summit in France on Monday that he was open to meeting Rowhani within weeks if “the circumstances were correct.”

Such a meeting could conceivably take place in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in late September.

But Rowhani said that the US must make significant concessions in order to end the stand-off.

“Washington should completely revise its Iran policy,” he said, including returning to the 2015 nuclear agreement that Trump pulled out of last year. The US then reimposed crippling economic sanctions, including on Iran’s vital oil sector.

Worries in the West about an Iranian nuclear bomb are unfounded, Rowhani said. “Atomic bombs and chemical weapons play no part in the Iran’s defence doctrine,” he said.