Iran's supreme leader questions Rouhani's diplomacy with US

Iran's supreme leader questions Hassan Rouhani's diplomacy with US

Ayatollah Khamenei welcomes new policy of outreach with west, but said some aspects of New York trip were 'not appropriate'

• Shane Hickey
  
  
  The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has told the country's president said that some of his diplomatic moves made towards the United States were "not appropriate", but reiterated his support for the new policy of outreach to the west.
  
  
  President Hassan Rouhani was greeted with both cheers and eggs when he returned to Tehran from New York, where he had a 15-minute phone conversation with US president Barack Obama – a landmark development in thawing relations between the two countries.
  
  
  Hardliners within Iran, including commanders in the revolutionary guard, said the president went too far in reaching out to the US.

Commenting on his website khamenei.ir, the ayatollah said the US was "untrustworthy". "We support the government's diplomatic moves including the New York trip because we have faith [in them]," he said.

"But some of what happened in the New York trip was not appropriate. We are sceptical of Americans and have no trust in them at all. The American government is untrustworthy, arrogant, illogical and a promise-breaker. It's a government captured by the international Zionism network."

The move by the president has been met with support by Iranian legislators although factions have become wary at the pace of developments.

The revolutionary guard's chief commander, Gen Mohammad Ali Jafari, praised Rouhani recently but called the phone call a "tactical mistake" and said he should have avoided it.

"The respected president, who adopted a powerful and appropriate position in the trip … would have been better off avoiding the telephone conversation with Obama in the same way he didn't give time for a meeting with Obama and left such measures until after practical, verifiable steps by the US government and a test of their goodwill," he said in an interview earlier this week.

The revolutionary guard is one of the few institutions capable of standing up to president if it believes he is going too far and too fast.

Iran is at loggerheads with the US over its disputed nuclear program, which the west says is intent on developing weapons technology. Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/05/iran-ayatollah-ali-khamenei