{"id":40816,"date":"2019-09-11T13:24:19","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T13:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40816"},"modified":"2019-09-11T13:24:19","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T13:24:19","slug":"three-australians-detained-in-iran-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40816","title":{"rendered":"Three Australians detained in Iran: government"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nTEHRAN: Iran on Wednesday rejected the possibility of a meeting between President Hassan Rouhani and US counterpart Donald Trump, after the White House signalled it was open to such an encounter.<\/p>\n

Two of Trump\u2019s top lieutenants on Tuesday indicated he was ready to meet the Iranian president without preconditions, after the US leader sacked his hawkish national security adviser John Bolton.<\/p>\n

But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stressed the United States would maintain its campaign of \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d against the Islamic republic.<\/p>\n

The idea of a Trump-Rouhani meeting was floated last month by French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been spearheading European efforts to de-escalate tensions between Iran and the United States.<\/p>\n

The arch-foes have been at loggerheads since May last year when Trump unilaterally withdrew from a 2015 nuclear deal and began reimposing crippling sanctions on Iran.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s representative at the United Nations reiterated Rouhani\u2019s position in an interview published Wednesday by state news agency IRNA.<\/p>\n

Majid Takht-Ravanchi said a meeting could take place only if Washington ends its \u201ceconomic terrorism\u201d by lifting all of its sanctions against Tehran.<\/p>\n

The Iranian envoy said any meeting must also be held in the framework of the group of major powers that negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as the US government\u2019s economic terrorism and such cruel sanctions are imposed on the Iranian people, there is no room for negotiations,\u201d he was quoted as saying by IRNA.<\/p>\n

The diplomat said Trump\u2019s decision to dismiss Bolton \u2014 a hard-liner accused of pushing Trump toward war against Iran \u2014 was a matter for the Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe removal of John Bolton is an internal affair and we don\u2019t take stands on domestic issues,\u201d said Takht-Ravanchi. Asked about the impact of Bolton\u2019s sacking on long-fraught relations between Iran and the United States, he said it was \u201ctoo soon\u201d to make any judgments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether the extremist policy of the US changes or not depends on various factors in US foreign policy,\u201d he told ISNA. Bolton is a controversial figure closely linked to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and other aggressive US foreign policy decisions.<\/p>\n

He had been seen as one of the main driving forces in the White House\u2019s muscular approach to Iran, North Korea and Venezuela among others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TEHRAN: Iran on Wednesday rejected the possibility of a meeting between President Hassan Rouhani and US counterpart Donald Trump, after the White House signalled it was open to such an encounter. Two of Trump\u2019s top lieutenants on Tuesday indicated he was ready to meet the Iranian president without preconditions, after the US leader sacked his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":40817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}