A reported meeting between multi-billionaire Donald Trump confidant Elon Musk and Iranian diplomats in New York would have been highly ill-advised due to the likely superior preparation by the Iranian side, Trump's ex-Iran envoy said.
"I think it was a terrible idea for many reasons," Trump's former special representative for Iran and veteran foreign policy hawk Elliot Abrams told Iran International in an interview.
"First of all, it's a kind of signal of wanting to negotiate, which I think it was wrong to send now ... and to send through Musk. I with all due respect, I take him to be a business genius. But that doesn't mean he knows a lot about diplomacy."
Musk met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani in New York on Nov. 11 to discuss ways to defuse tensions between the two countries, according to a report by the New York Times.
Two Iranian officials, who spoke to the paper on condition of anonymity, described the meeting which lasted just over an hour, as “positive” and “good news.”
Musk and a Trump spokesperson did not respond to request for comment at the time and Iran's Foreign Ministry promptly denied it occurred, dismissing it as media sensationalism by American outlets.
Asked about the alleged encounter, president-elect Trump said in an interview with Time magazine published on Thursday he had no knowledge of it. "I don't know that he met with them," he was quoted as saying. "I don't know. He didn't tell me that."
"I make the assumption that Trump knew about it," Abrams said before the Time interview was published. "It's a big deal and I don't think Musk would have done it and kind of sprung it on the president and said, hey, guess what I did yesterday?"
"That's an important meeting. What is the record of that meeting that we, the Americans, have? We don't have any record of the meeting. I mean, know, Musk is not trained at this," Abrams added. "He's not trained at remembering the details. Did he have a note-taker with him?"
"A real diplomat, you would have had a note taker writing it all down. I assume the Iranians recorded the meeting. So they've got it, probably, word for word ... Musk is unquestionably a brilliant person, but that doesn't mean he knows what he's doing in a diplomatic meeting."
