Iran’s president-elect rules out meeting with Joe Biden

Iran’s new president-elect Ebrahim Raisi (AP/Vahid Salemi)

Iran’s president-elect has said he would not meet with US President Joe Biden or negotiate over Tehran’s ballistic missile programme and its support of regional militias.

Judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi also described himself as a “defender of human rights” when asked about his involvement in the 1988 mass execution of some 5,000 people. It marked the first time he has been put on the spot on live television over that dark moment in Iranian history at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.