TEHRAN -- President Ebrahim Raisi says he has no plans to either meet or talk with his American counterpart Joe Biden during his upcoming trip to New York, where he will address the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
“I do not think that such a meeting is going to take place,” Raeisi told CBS News’ 60 Minutes program during an interview conducted Tuesday, which the channel broadcast in full on Sunday.
Asked if he was open to a face-to-face meeting with President Biden, Raisi said, “I don’t believe having a meeting or a talk with him will be beneficial.”
The Iranian president was also asked whether he could see any differences between the Biden administration and the administration of his predecessor Donald Trump.
“The new administration in the U.S., they claim that they are different from the Trump administration,” Raisi said, adding, “They have said it in their messages to us. But we haven’t witnessed any changes in reality.”
President Raisi will set off for New York on Monday to deliver a speech at the 77th United Nations General Assembly session about the Islamic Republic’s stance on the “fair international order through economic multilateralism.”
On Sunday, the Iranian president met with Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei upon return from the Uzbek capital city of Samarkand, where he attended the 22nd Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit.
Raisi presented a report on his Uzbekistan visit and briefed Ayatollah Khamenei on his upcoming trip to New York.
The Leader expressed his satisfaction with the report and the set of measures taken and wished the president success on the eve of his trip to New York.
Under Trump, the United Sates left a 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, reinstating the sanctions that the deal had lifted.
On his campaign trail, Biden alleged that he intended to return Washington to the deal, which is officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
He has, however, stopped short of taking any such measure, and has even imposed more sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
The Austrian capital of Vienna has been hosting many rounds of negotiations between Iran and the JCPOA’s remaining members since last year to examine the potential of the deal’s revival and fresh removal of the sanctions.
The talks have, however, failed to bring about either amid, what Tehran has denounced as, Washington’s continual foot-dragging and inflexibility.
Speaking to Qatar’s Al Jazeera television network on Thursday, Raisi likewise said direct talks with the U.S. over the nuclear agreement were “of no avail.”
The final decision for restoration of the JCPOA rested with the U.S., he said, adding the United States has to take trust-building measures towards the Iranian side.
Rasi also told the Doha-based network that any potential removal of the American sanctions had to be accompanied with relevant “guarantees” that Washington would not return the bans again.
The Iranian president censured a raft of new sanctions that Washington had imposed most recently on Iran, asking, “If Washington is after an agreement, why does it apply new sanctions during the course of the nuclear talks?”