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Bloomberg
If President Donald Trump’s bid to negotiate with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is a work in progress — three meetings to date and no breakthrough — his suggestion of face time with Iran’s leader appears dead on arrival.
Iranian officials ruled out Trump talks with President Hassan Rouhani, who rejected a photo-op and said the US must lift sanctions first.
Rouhani faces a different domestic landscape to Kim and has to be more responsive to public pressure with parliamentary elections due in February.
Iranians are suffering with an economy creaking under US penalties reintroduced after Trump withdrew from the international nuclear deal, and
politicians in Tehran are divided over whether to engage with Washington.
There are perils for Trump too. That’s not to say there isn’t pressure on Iran to find some face-saving way back from the brink. For now, Iran joins other short-lived diplomatic breakthroughs to emerge from the G-7 summit, from a trade deal with China that now appears as distant as ever to aid for the Amazon rejected by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.