Rouhani says 'willingness' of new American President can restore Iran-US relations

On November 25, Iran President Hassan Rouhani said in a press conference that Iran hopes US would return to normalizing bilateral relations to the pre-Trump era and return to negotiations with the new president in the office. Rouhani condemned the outgoing president, Donald Trump on his foreign policy and said that he was looking forward to improving ties with US President-elect Joe Biden. The Iranian leader asserted that the new US President must “clearly condemn” Trump's “terrorist and anti-humanitarian policies”, adding, that his administration played defective politics for four years. 

In a national address, Iran’s President said that solving the bitter relations between the Iran and US “will be very easy”  if the Biden administration made efforts to reform the situation that existed prior to January 20, 2017, when Donald Trump was sworn in as the new President of the United States. Further, he insisted, “Iran's policy has been to meet obligations with obligations, actions with actions and de-escalation with de-escalation,” in a live-streamed address, shared by The Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) on Twitter.

Berating the US White House of exercising an “inhuman and unjust pressure” on Iran with its trade embargo amid the global crisis, Rouhani said that the willingness of the new leader in the US will determine if he will want to return to his obligations towards Iran. The leader of the Islamic Republic, in a positive gesture, said that Iran finds that these conditions “can change”. 

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Iran cannot 'trust foreign players'

However, presenting the contrasting opinions, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised address that Iran was no longer in a position to “trust foreign players”. He added that despite negotiating for several years, there was no satisfactory outcome. Meanwhile, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani had earlier said in a statement that the next US administration had the opportunity to compensate for “President Donald Trump’s mistakes”. Rouhani’s remarks come in view of Joe Biden’s foreign policy visions laid out in his election campaign trail that focused on security and prosperity between the US democracy and its alliances abroad. “America will lead by example and rally the world to meet our common challenges,” Biden said. In the highest-level response to the US, the Iranian leader called for the US to hold talks on Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal and mend ties, a state-run news agency IRNA confirmed. 

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