Former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani said he was “only one step short of meeting” with then-President Donald Trump in October 2019, but the meeting was scuttled after Trump said he would announce the meeting ahead of time.
The meeting was set to take place on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Rouhani wrote in his soon-to-be released autobiography, Without Smoke, Fire, And Blood.
“Trump insisted that he should break out the news about the meeting. But I knew he was an actor. He was not an ordinary man. He was acting all the time. A good actor. I was worried that he might announce the meeting and then disrupt the game,” Rouhani wrote according to an excerpt published in Iran’s Aftab News website. “We said: first the meeting, then the news.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei objected to the meeting, but Rouhani said he was willing to meet Trump nonetheless in order to procure sanctions relief.
“But at the last minute, we decided that there was no chance for an honest dialogue with Trump on equal footing. And others knew about it,” he said.
“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,” he wrote.
“If Obama was in office as US President rather than Trump, I would have definitely gone to meet with him,” he wrote.
According to London-based opposition website Iran International, Khamenei most likely intervened at the last moment and scuppered the meeting.
“Knowing Khamenei and Rouhani, it is unconceivable to think that Rouhani would have met Trump without first seeking Khamenei’s permission,” the news site said.
The report also cited Tehran’s then-government spokesman Ali Rabiei as saying at the time that Rouhani was not slated to meet with Trump and that no conditions have been set for such a meeting. “There is no reason for a meeting between Rouhani and an economic terrorist,” said Rabiei.
Five days after the meeting failed to materialize, Trump slapped a new set of sanctions on Iran.
Just over a year later, Rouhani celebrated the departure of Trump from office, saying he was a “stupid terrorist,” and urged newcomer Joe Biden to return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.