U.S. President Donald Trump could meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at a U.N. General Assembly meeting, with “no preconditions,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday.
Pompeo’s remarks came during a news briefing to unveil new sanctions against Iran, including against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Reuters reported.
The briefing came just hours after Trump announced on Twitter the resignation of national security adviser John Bolton, who bolstered the U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign against Iranian nuclear capability.
According to the Islamic Republic News Agency, senior adviser to Rouhani Hesamuddin Ashena said that Bolton’s resignation was a “clear sign that the U.S. maximum pressure strategy has failed.”
“The fact that John Bolton was sidelined and then eliminated isn’t an accident,” Ashena said, adding, “Iran’s siege will break.”
Iranian government spokesperson Ali Rabiei similarly posed on Twitter that “with the ousting of its biggest proponent of war and economic terrorism, the White House will have fewer obstacles to understanding the realities of Iran. Months ago, John Bolton had promised that Iran would not be there in three months; we are still standing, and he is gone.”
Rouhani has expressed interest in talking to the United States, but only after U.S. sanctions are lifted.