Trump open to meeting Iran’s president on UN sidelines: Rubio

President Trump is open to meeting the Iranian delegation on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly while he is in New York, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday.

Rubio, who also serves as national security adviser, made the remarks in an interview with Fox News, saying the president operates on the “common sense” that there’s no harm in engaging or talking to someone.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are part of a “core” delegation to whom the State Department provided visas to attend the global summit, despite more than six months of war between the U.S. and Iran, which the U.S. and Israel launched together on Feb. 28.

“I think the president is open to a meeting with him [Pezeshkian] or anybody,” Rubio said when asked if Trump would meet with the delegation.

“Whether something productive will come out of it, it’s harder to tell because the ultimate decisionmaker in Iran is the supreme leader, and the supreme leader is a radical Shia cleric,” Rubio added.

In another interview with NBC’s “Today,” Rubio reiterated that Trump is open to a meeting with the Iranian president, but “I don’t think anything is scheduled at this point.”

“If it has the prospects of leading to something positive and ultimately achieving the goal of what this is all about, and that is the fact that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran stalled over the collapse of a joint memorandum of understanding that was meant to impose a ceasefire and open transit through the Strait of Hormuz.

Military strikes between the U.S. and Iran resumed this month after about six weeks of quiet, with Iran targeting oil ships in the strait, American bases in the region and U.S. allies. The U.S. has imposed a blockade on Iranian oil exports and struck military targets, although the U.S. was accused of hitting a wedding celebration, resulting in civilian casualties.

Meanwhile, the Houthis in Yemen, backed by Iran, have disrupted energy exports through the Red Sea, further sending gas and diesel prices soaring .

Trump is scheduled to meet with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council on Tuesday to discuss the way forward in the war with Iran.

Rubio responded to questions on high energy prices by saying they would be “double” if Iran had a nuclear weapon.

“And they would use that nuclear weapon to control the Straits of Hormuz forever. They would be able to choke off the world’s energy supply any time they wanted,” Rubio said.

The Trump administration has given conflicting statements on their reasons for starting the war with Iran, having claimed that Iran was a short time away from building a nuclear weapon while also boasting of having obliterated Iran’s nuclear program in strikes carried out in June 2025. Rubio, at the start of the war, said the U.S. joined Israel in striking Iran to preempt Iranian retaliation against American military sites in the region.