After meeting with US President Donald Trump in the United States, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe traveled to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, becoming the first Japanese leader to visit Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Abe had sought to mediate talks between Iran and the United States after the Trump administration exited from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a nuclear deal between Iran, the European Union and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (P5+1).

Khamenei, however, has remained firm in his position that after the United States violated the JCPOA, it cannot be trusted to negotiate another settlement. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has no trust in America,” Khamenei said to Abe. “And the bitter experience of negotiations with America under the framework of the JCPOA will in no way be repeated because no free and reasonable country would accept negotiations under pressure.”

Khamenei added, “Iran negotiated for five to six years with America and Europe within the P5+1 and even reached a conclusion. But America violated this agreement. Which reasonable country would negotiate again with someone who undermines the previous agreements?”

Abe arrived in Tehran specifically to deliver Trump’s message to Khamenei, to which Khamenei replied, “I have no doubt about your good intentions [and] what you quoted from the American president, but I do not see Trump’s character as worthy for exchanging messages and I have no answer for him and will never have one.”