Tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk met with Iran’s UN ambassador in the American metropolis of New York City on Monday to discuss relations between Iran and the United States and how to de-escalate tensions between the two.
This is stated by two unnamed officials from the Iranian diplomacy to the American newspaper The New York Times.
The officials have spoken anonymously because they do not have a mandate to discuss the meeting publicly.
They tell the newspaper that it was a “positive” meeting with “good news”.
Elon Musk is the director of a number of companies, including the electric car manufacturer Tesla, the aerospace company SpaceX and the former Twitter, now X.
He currently tops the financial magazine Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people with a fortune of 298.4 billion dollars. This corresponds to DKK 2113.2 billion.
Earlier this week, the rich man was officially appointed by the newly elected future president of the United States, Donald Trump, to head a unit which will clean up the American government bureaucracy.
However, there were no reports at the time that Musk would have to work with American diplomacy in his role.
Trump’s press secretary, Steven Cheung, has denied that the meeting took place.
– We do not comment on reports of private meetings that never took place, says Cheung.
Iran and the United States have generally had a tense relationship since the clerical regime took power in Iran in 1979.
US President Barack Obama concluded a nuclear agreement with the Iranian government during his term of office in 2015, which, among other things, gave the UN the opportunity to supervise the Iranian nuclear program.
During his term in office, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement and replaced it with sanctions against Iran. It is therefore no longer possible for the UN to supervise Iran’s production of nuclear power.
In the past year, tensions have particularly increased due to the war between the Palestinian movement Hamas and Israel.
Hamas receives financial and political support from Iran, while the United States is Israel’s main ally and imports approximately two-thirds of its weapons from the Americans.
A spokesperson for the incoming Donald Trump administration, Karoline Leavitt, says in a statement that the American people have placed their trust in Trump to lead the country and restore world peace.
– When he returns to the White House, he will do what it takes to accomplish just that, says Karoline Leavitt to The New York Times.
Donald Trump was elected in the November 5 presidential election. He will be officially sworn in as the next President of the United States in a ceremony in Congress on January 20, 2025.
/ritzau/
Source: www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk
