Elon Musk on Monday met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations and reportedly discussed ways to defuse tensions between Tehran and the United States, two Iranian officials told The New York Times.
The officials said the meeting, which lasted an hour in New York, was “positive” and “good news.”
Steven Cheung, President-elect Donald Trump’s communications director, told the Times, “We do not comment on reports of private meetings that did or did not occur.”
Musk, who pumped an estimated $200 million through his political action committee to help elect Trump, made himself a fixture at Mar-a-Lago since the presidential election and is on regular speaking terms with like-minded political world leaders, from Argentina’s President Javier Milei to Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
One of the Iranian officials said Musk requested the meeting, the Times reported.
The U.S. and Iran have had an adversarial relationship since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and the takeover of the U.S. Embassy and 444-day hostage crisis that followed.
In Trump’s first term in office, he pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran. He withdrew the U.S. from the agreement with world powers known as the Iran nuclear deal, calling in “one-sided,” imposed sanctions on the terror state and ordered the killing of the country’s top general, Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state, has repeatedly expressed his own disgust with Trump, but Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who will mark his first 100 days in office next week, campaigned on a promise of outreach to the West to lift sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program ” which now enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels.
Last Thursday, Pezeshkian appeared to remain open to talks with Washington ” even in the wake of Trump’s victory ” saying that “it doesn’t matter who has won the U.S elections.”
“We will in no way have a closed and limited approach in the expansion of ties with other countries,” he said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
That leaves open the possibility for negotiations. However, Trump has reportedly vowed to reinstitute his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran, including sanctions, once he takes office.
Published in 11/15/2024 10h01
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