AP: Iran’s top leader hinted Saturday that he disapproved of the phone call between Presidents Hassan Rouhani and Barack Obama during the Iranian leader’s trip to New York last month, but he reiterated his crucial support for the president’s policy of outreach to the West.
The Associated Press
By Ali Akbar Dareini
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s top leader hinted Saturday that he disapproved of the phone call between Presidents Hassan Rouhani and Barack Obama during the Iranian leader’s trip to New York last month, but he reiterated his crucial support for the president’s policy of outreach to the West.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s comments came after hard-liners criticized the 15-minute phone conversation between Rouhani and Obama, a gesture aimed at ending three decades of estrangement between the two countries.
Hard-liners, including commanders in the powerful Revolutionary Guard, have said the president went too far in reaching out to the U.S.
Khamenei, whose speech was broadcast on state TV, also said the U.S. was “untrustworthy.” He previously has said he’s not opposed to direct talks with the U.S. to resolve Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West but is not optimistic.
“We support the government’s diplomatic moves including the New York trip because we have faith (in them),” Khamenei told commanders and graduating military cadets in Tehran. “But some of what happened in the New York trip was not appropriate,” a thinly veiled reference to the phone call.
Iran is at loggerheads with the U.S. over its disputed nuclear program, which the West says aims at developing weapons technology. Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes and geared toward generating electricity and producing radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.
“We are skeptical of Americans and have no trust in them at all. The American government is untrustworthy, arrogant, illogical and a promise-breaker. It’s a government captured by the international Zionism network,” Khamenei said.
Rouhani said before and after his trip to New York that he had “full powers” to negotiate a deal with the West, an indication that he had received a mandate from the supreme leader, who has final say on all matters of state. His outreach has also received broad support from Iranian legislators and it appears popular, but some including the Guard seem rattled by the pace of developments.
The Guard’s chief commander, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, praised Rouhani recently but called the phone call a “tactical mistake” and said he should have avoided it.
“The respected president, who adopted a powerful and appropriate position in the trip … would have been better off avoiding the telephone conversation with Obama – in the same way he didn’t give time for a meeting with Obama – and left such measures until after practical, verifiable steps by the U.S. government and a test of their good will,” he said in an interview earlier this week.
The Guard is one of the few institutions capable of acting as a spoiler if it sees Rouhani going too far and too fast.
Khamenei’s remarks may have been prompted by recent statements from Washington that Tehran feels run counter to the spirit of reconciliation.
For example, Obama said Monday, as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the U.S. was not taking a military option against Iran’s nuclear program off the table.
