The White House on Thursday said that it had nothing to announce in response to a Kyodo news report that the United States had requested a meeting between President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly later this month.

The report comes as Trump has mulled French proposals to try to reduce tensions with Iran that include offering Iran a European line of credit in exchange for Iran's return to full compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and avoiding provocations in the Persian Gulf. Trump, surrounded mostly by hard-line advisers averse to diplomacy with Iran, including national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has increasingly turned to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin when contemplating diplomatic options involving Iran, sources said.

“There is already a pattern … that the president, if he decides to pursue a specific policy on a difficult issue, he tends to sideline people who are not entirely on board with his vision,” Ali Vaez, director of Iran programs at the International Crisis Group, told Al-Monitor. “And the same way that Bolton has been sidelined on Afghanistan and on North Korea, I think it is not entirely unimaginable that he would be sidelined for people who are more pragmatic like Mnuchin.”

“As the president said yesterday, anything is possible,” a senior US administration official, speaking not for attribution, told Al-Monitor regarding the Kyodo report that the United States has requested a Rouhani meeting. “The president has been clear that dropping sanctions won't be happening.”