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Iranian president backs out of possible meeting with President Trump, demands sanctions be lifted first
Thomas Koehler/Photothek via Getty Images

Iranian president backs out of possible meeting with President Trump, demands sanctions be lifted first

This came a day after he seemed to be on board with the idea

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that he would not meet with the President Donald Trump unless the United States first lifted sanctions it had put in place on the Iranian regime.

Here's what we know

On Monday, Trump floated the idea of meeting with Rouhani, saying that there was a "really good chance" that such a summit could happen. This development was due to the efforts of French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been pushing for more dialogue in an increasingly tense relationship between the U.S. and Iran.

Rouhani said Monday that he "would not miss" a chance to meet "even if the odds of success are not 90 percent but are 20 percent or 10 percent."

But by Tuesday, that had all changed.

In a televised address Tuesday, Rouhani said definitively that "without the U.S.'s withdrawal from sanctions, we will not witness any positive development." He also dismissed the meeting Trump had suggested as a PR move by the United States, adding "if someone intends to make it as just a photo-op," then "that is not possible."

What else?

Macron has also been trying to save the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. While France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have tried to keep the agreement alive, Trump announced in May 2018 that the U.S. would be leaving the agreement.

In June, Iran's government said that it was about to pass the nuclear stockpile limits that it had agreed to under this deal.

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