The surreal experience of meeting Khamenei

At one point, Ban interrupted the supreme leader, noting the May 2009 letter from then-U.S. President Barack Obama to Khamenei and Obama’s 2010 Cairo speech. He explained that conversations with U.S. officials convinced him that the U.S. administration was sincere in wanting a less antagonistic relationship. (Unknown to Ban at the time, Obama had also sent a second letter in 2009.) Khamenei was dismissive; Ban was naïve. One should never trust the Americans, he said, with their uncompromising hostility toward the Islamic Republic and unrelenting commitment to overturn the Islamic revolution. In his view, Obama’s letter was a ruse, and Iran was wise enough not to fall for it. 

Khamenei could have talked about economic development, the Non-Aligned Summit opening the following day, or any number of noncontroversial issues related to the U.N. He might have tried to persuade Ban that Iran’s controversial nuclear program was peaceful. Instead, he used the entirety of a rare meeting with the top U.N. official to indict the United States. This did not seem to be for my benefit. In addition to his only cursory acknowledgement of my presence, I believe Khamenei learned only later that Ban picked, of all the U.N. officials in the introductory meeting, the infamous, onetime Hezbollah-bashing U.S. ambassador to Lebanon to accompany him to the restricted meeting. Two days later, my past official life had sunk in: Rent-a-crowd protesters showed up at Ban’s meeting with university students to demand my departure.

As I jotted down Khamenei’s catalogue of American sins, bewildered to be experiencing Khamenei’s diatribe in person, I found three aspects particularly noteworthy. First, Khamenei’s failure to condemn or even mention Israel, which in his mind must have been an insignificant sideshow compared to this opportunity to highlight the nefarious role of the “Great Satan,” as official Iranian rhetoric describes the United States.

Second, his utter lack of charisma, the contrast between harsh rhetoric and flat delivery. Accustomed to my time in Lebanon, with Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s gravitational force and versatile use of humor in front of televised, spellbound audiences, I found Khamenei’s delivery curiously lifeless, accentuated by his utterly still, straight-back posture while speaking at length, without notes.

The third aspect almost prompted me to nod: while undoubtedly Washington officials had gaps in their understanding of Khamenei, the Americans in those meetings I once attended in Washington grasped precisely what was essential. I realized from listening to Khamenei that we got it right: his paranoia; his singular, hostile focus on the United States; how he was consumed with, and identified by, enmity toward Washington. By contrast, I thought, Khamenei gets us wrong. If he truly wanted to understand us, Khamenei could have queried Iranians who had studied in the United States or who had served at the Iranian mission to the U.N. But his obsession with U.S. enmity and decline led him to board flights of his preferred fancy: an imploding country of race riots, collapse of faith in democratic institutions, predatory economic mayhem, and falsified elections, all of which he outlined as if true. (What seemed preposterous in 2012 may now sound to many almost prescient, although prompted by Khamenei’s loathing rather than an informed read of America’s future.)

His monologue concluded, Khamenei stood, precluding further debate. In what was and wasn’t a handshake, he lifted his left arm (with the right arm immobilized by a 1981 bomb) for us to touch hands. In comparison to Khamenei’s bizarre rantings, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, in a subsequent meeting, came across as surprisingly lucid and rational compared to his offensive public theatrics. His “Death to Israel, death to America” was apparently for public consumption, not something to raise with the U.N. secretary-general.

The meeting I’m describing occurred over 13 years ago. Nothing that has happened since then has shaken my belief that Khamenei, with his hatred of the United States, directed a system that violently brutalized Iranians, murdered Americans and others, and threatened the region. Likewise, U.S. policies in the intervening years may well have reinforced Khamenei’s unshakeable conviction that the United States was a malevolent, untrustworthy force: U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, and U.S. participation in the June 2025 war despite ongoing negotiations. It’s safe to assume, given his wariness, that Khamenei authorized Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s participation in the most recent nuclear talks primarily in order to buy time. Khamenei’s own time ran out before he could document the latest in what he would see as proof of America’s enmity and perfidy.