Kuwait’s Arabic-language Al-Jarida is reporting on their front page of its website that U.S. and Iranian officials are negotiating a presidential visit for the middle of next year. The report cites an unnamed U.S. diplomat and states that a key sticking point to the visit is whether Obama would meet with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “The source said that the desire to visit is shared, and that Tehran and Washington are waiting for the conclusion of the arrangements prior to Iranian President Hassa Rouhani issuing an official invitation to his American counterpart to visit Tehran,” says an English translation of the report. “The source said that Obama was waiting for the invitation to devote his new administration’s policy in the region based on the principle of non-military involvement and balance,” the report claims. “He wants to be the first U.S. president to visit Iran since the Khomeini revolution in order to show that he is an advocate of peace and dialogue even with those who chant death to America.”
On Monday, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said, “There is no truth to this report,” in an email.
Relations between the United States and Iran have thawed somewhat since the more moderate Rouhani took office in August. Rouhani made a trip to the U.S. in September for a United Nations General Assembly meeting but did not meet with Obama or travel to Washington. Obama became the first U.S. president to speak by phone to his Iranian counterpart since the 1979 revolution when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was over-run in which 52 hostages were taken and held in isolation for 444 days by students.
In October, the two countries agreed on a historic, but very controversial, preliminary deal on Iran’s nuclear program. In the meantime, congress is considering a bill that would seem to circumvent Obama’s efforts with Iran. The bill would actually ‘increase’ sanctions against Iran instead of relaxing them during the current talks.
I find it incomprehensible to think that we would consider a trip to Iran, a country that the U.S. still considers ‘a state sponsor of terrorism’, by the United States President. Especially while Iran still holds American citizens in detention in prison for their religious beliefs and conduct ‘Proxy’ wars in Syria and throughout the Middle East involving our ally Israel and other countries.