Iran Says Trump Sought Meeting With President 8 Times at U.N. Last Year

Iran rejected eight requests from the United States for a meeting of their presidents at the United Nations General Assembly last year, a top Iranian official said Wednesday.

The assertion, if confirmed, suggests a previously undisclosed level of hostility among top Iranian officials toward President Donald Trump, who has called Iran a nuclear threat, regional menace and global sponsor of terrorism. It would also suggest a previously unknown eagerness by the Trump administration for some kind of dialogue.

White House and State Department officials did not immediately respond to the Iranian assertion, made by President Hassan Rouhani’s chief of staff, Mahmoud Vaezi, at a Cabinet meeting reported in Iran’s state-run news media.

“Trump asked the Iranian delegation eight times to have a meeting with the president,” Vaezi said.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry previously said an American request for a Trump-Rouhani meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly last September had been declined. Some Iranian state media have reported that Trump even invited Rouhani for dinner during that period.

But the number of times that Trump’s requests for a meeting were rebuffed had not been reported.

Since the last General Assembly session, Trump has moved aggressively to isolate Iran, withdrawing the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement and restoring and strengthening sanctions against the country — defying the wishes of most other U.N. member states, including close American allies. Trump also has included Iran on a list of mostly Muslim countries subjected to a ban on travel to the U.S.

Iranian officials have made no secret of their contempt for Trump. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has sarcastically thanked him for showing America’s “true face.”

While Iranian officials had no warm feelings toward Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, top diplomats from the two countries collaborated closely on the nuclear accord, which eased sanctions in return for Iran’s verifiable pledges to never acquire nuclear weapons.

Obama and Rouhani held a telephone conversation at the end of the 2013 General Assembly as the Iranian leader headed home, becoming the first leaders of their countries to speak in more than three decades and raising hopes at the time that the long-estranged relationship might improve.

Despite Trump’s antipathy toward Iran, there has always been some expectation that he would seek to engage with Iranian officials in a manner similar to how he has approached another adversary, North Korea. After a litany of bombastic threats and insults, Trump met with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, in Singapore last month.

North Korea appeared to be on the mind of Vaezi in his remarks on Wednesday, in which he seemed to suggest that Kim had made a mistake.

“We have a transparent policy and clear position with regard to our relations with the U.S.,” Vaezi said. “The characteristic of this establishment and people is that they will not yield to pressure. Trump should know that Iran and its people are different from North Korea and its people.”

Some political analysts suggested that Iran’s emphasis on its rejection of Trump reflected an absolute policy of no engagement enforced by Khamenei, who has the final word on such matters and is deeply distrustful of the West — especially the United States.

“The biggest obstacle to a U.S.-Iran dialogue is not Trump but Khamenei,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Trump flew halfway around the world to meet with Kim Jong Un. Khamenei hasn’t left Iran since 1989.”

Since Trump repudiated the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran two months ago, the risks that the accord will collapse have grown.

Iran has sued the U.S. at the International Court of Justice in an attempt to annul the restored U.S. sanctions, which drastically limit business dealings and investments.

Iranian officials also have threatened to renounce the nuclear accord if its European partners cannot find ways to bypass the U.S. sanctions, which threaten penalties on all countries that engage economically with Iran.

The prospects for European success suffered a setback on Wednesday when the president of the European Investment Bank said its operations would be at risk by investing in Iran.

The president, Werner Hoyer, said that while he supported European efforts to preserve the nuclear deal, Iran was a country “where we cannot play an active role,” Reuters reported.

“We have to take note of the fact that we would risk the business model of the bank if we were active in Iran,” Hoyer was quoted by Reuters as saying.