to be an agenda that they’re prepared to speak to. We are not just prepared to do it for the exercise." A few days later Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected the offer and added ambiguously: "The U.S. policies in the Middle East have failed and the Americans are in need of a winning hand. That is bringing Iran to the negotiating table." On 4 February the Italian news-wire "Agenzia Nova", citing "sources in Teheran," reported that "from the beginning of the year Ali Larijani, Speaker of the (Iranian) Parliament, secretly traveled twice to the United States" to launch direct negotiations with the Obama Administration. The Italian Agency explained that US diplomacy was waiting for the Presidential election in Iran, that most probably will see a dramatic change in Iranian approach. It was reported on 17 June Iran's newly elected president Hassan Rohani had expressed readiness for bilateral talks with Washington, with conditions. On 2 April 2015, hailing the agreement between the P5+1 and Iran on parameters for a comprehensive agreement, President Obama said "Today, the United States, together with our allies and partners, has reached an historic understanding with Iran, which if fully implemented, will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon." In April 2018, Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State nominee at the time, said that he believed that Iran had not been "racing" to develop a nuclear weapon before the finalization of the Iran deal and that it would not do so if the deal were to unravel, although he favored a "fix" of the deal. As of 2021, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not rule out a military intervention to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. On 12 May 2022, a French diplomatic source stated that the US is unlikely to agree to remove Iran's elite security force from its list of foreign terrorist organizations anytime soon. Negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 Iran has held a series of meetings with a group of six countries: China, France, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, United States. These six are known as the P5+1 (the permanent five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) or alternatively as the E3+3. These meetings are intended to resolve concerns about Iran's nuclear program. October 2009 Geneva negotiations January 2011 Istanbul meeting Negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 were resumed on 21 January 2011 in Istanbul after about a