ATTA KENARE
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.”