Iran's president said he won't meet with Trump. Trump says he didn't want to meet anyway.

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

President Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani are both in New York on U.N. business this week, but Rouhani has made it clear he does not want to meet his American counterpart.

"Naturally, if someone is keen on having a meeting and holding dialogue and creating progress in relationships, that person would not use the tool of sanctions and threats [and bring] to bear all of its power against another government and nation," Rouhani said Monday. "That means that the necessary willpower is absent in order to resolve outstanding issues." Tehran has consistently refused talks with the Trump administration since the president withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal earlier this year, labeling Trump an "untrustworthy" diplomatic partner.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.