TEHRAN – Just two days after more than 23 million Iranians handed a second term to incumbent moderate President Hassan Rouhani, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he’ll talk with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif “at the right time”. 

“I’ve never shut off the phone to anyone that wants to talk or have a productive conversation,” Tillerson said in Riyadh of Zarif. “At this point, I have no plans to call my counterpart in Iran, although in all likelihood, we will talk at the right time.”

Tillerson was making the comments in Saudi Arabia at a joint press conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Bin Ahmed al-Jubeir. 

During his presidential campaigns, Rouhani pledged to remove U.S. non-nuclear sanctions on Iran, interpreted as a signal to the Trump administration. 

Tillerson, however, launched “baseless” accusations against Iran, saying he wants reelected Rouhani to stop backing “destabilizing forces” in the Middle East. 

This is while Zarif advised U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss how to avoid another September 11 attack with the Saudi hosts of his first official visit abroad. 

"(Trump) must enter into dialogue with them about ways to prevent terrorists and takfiris from continuing to fuel the fire in the region and repeating the likes of the September 11 incident by their sponsors in Western countries," Zarif wrote for the website of the London-based Al Araby Al-Jadeed news network.

Saudi Arabia denies providing any support for the 19 hijackers - most of whom were Saudi citizens - who killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001.
AK/PA