The newly elected president of Iran has said he has absolutely no intention of meeting Joe Biden or backing down on Tehran’s ballistic missile program. Ebrahim Raisi, 60, told a news conference after last week’s election that the missile program and Tehran’s support for regional militias were both “non-negotiable,” the Associated Press reported. Asked about a possible meeting with President Biden, the president-elect replied simply: “No.” World powers are currently negotiating to salvage a deal, ditched by the Trump administration, to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The hardliner’s election has triggered speculation that Israel might decide to mount a strike on Iran—especially after the newly elected Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, used his first Cabinet meeting to attack Raisi as a “mass murderer.” As a young prosecutor, Raisi is said to have been involved in the execution of thousands of political dissidents in 1988, but insisted Monday that he had always been a “defender of human rights.”
