Trump ‘Left Hanging’ After Rouhani Refuses To Answer Call

NEW YORK- French President Emmanuel Macron was reportedly close to arranging a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during the course of the  UN General assembly last week, according a Sunday report in the New Yorker. However the initiative fell apart due to the Iranian leader’s lack of trust in the US president.

Macron had arranged for technicians to install a secure line in Rouhani’s New York hotel suite for a three-way conference call Tuesday evening, but when the French president arrived at the suite and proposed the call, Rouhani refused to participate. At the time Trump was already waiting on the line and Rouhani would have simply had to leave his suite and walk into the secure room in order to speak to him. However he refused and, as the New York Times reported, “Mr. Macron left empty-handed and Mr. Trump was left hanging.”

The report added that Rouhani was skeptical that Trump could deliver on Tehran’s demand to lift sanctions in exchange for renewing dialogue, since Trump had called on world leaders earlier to join the sanctions and stop funding “Iran’s bloodlust.”

Rouhani also feared he would be trapped in an encounter that could be exploited by Trump as a headline-grabbing success, and was also worried about the repercussions of such a call from hardliners in Tehran. In 2013 Rouhani spoke by telephone with former US president Barack Obama on the sidelines of the UN general assembly and was severely criticized by Supreme Leader Ali Khameini for agreeing to the communication.

On Friday, Rouhani claimed that Trump had offered to lift all sanctions against Tehran in exchange for a meeting of the two leaders.

Trump immediately denied the account on a twitter post claiming it was Iran who was asking to talk and he had refused to comply.