Recently eliminated Iranian secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani visited New York City in September 2015 and seemingly met with former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
The visit took place in the context of the thaw in relations between the United States and Iran due to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal, agreed to that year. Larijani attended a variety of meetings, as well as the Fourth World Conference of Parliament Speakers. He also met with a variety of counterparts from “Tunisia, Slovenia, Georgia, Italy, Croatia, and Azerbaijan; Iranian scholars in New York; as well as US Jewish anti-Zionist society,” according to Iran’s Mehr News.
Murtaza Hussain, who covers national security and foreign affairs for Drop Site News, on March 21, posted a passage from Vali Nasr’s 2025 book Iran’s Grand Strategy on X/Twitter, noting that a senior Iranian official visited the United Nations and “met with former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger.”
Hussain posted, “In 2015, an unnamed senior Iranian official met Henry Kissinger in New York and explained Iranian foreign policy vis-a-vis the United States with reference to Immanuel Kant’s idea of perpetual peace at the endpoint of exhaustion from conflict.”
Kissinger reflected on changes in the world, making remarks about the USSR and China and the Cold War. “Kissinger probed his Iranian guest on when [it] might be that Iran would similarly abandon its revolutionary ideology and embrace pragmatism.” Would Iran move from being a “cause” to being a nation-state?
The conversation shifted course to a discussion of Immanuel Kant “and his theory of ‘perpetual peace,’ which stipulates that conflict between states ends when protagonists have exhausted themselves with conflict.” The American statesman was impressed. “Kissinger was surprised that his Iranian interlocutor had already mastered Kant.”
It turned out that this Iranian had not just mastered it, but he had translated the original German text to Persian.
“On that day in 2015, it was not Islamic ideology but rather Kant that sat between American and Iranian statesmen.”
The unnamed Iranian appears to have been Larijani, killed in an airstrike on March 17.
Defense Minister Israel Katz announced the assassination: “Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated last night and have joined Khamenei, the head of the annihilation program, along with all those eliminated from the Axis of Evil in the depths of hell.”
The year 2026 is different than 2015.
In 2015, an American statesman such as Kissinger could sit down with an Iranian official and speak about philosophy.
It was a different time, and the post about this historic meeting is a reminder of that different time. Kissinger believed in the value of speaking with others and diplomacy.
Larijani speaks on Kissinger
Last year, Larijani spoke to PBS’s Frontline.
“What’s your message to the Trump administration if there are more attacks? What would be the consequence of that?” he was asked.
“I don’t have a message for the Trump administration. I would only say that they should be mindful of their words and the insulting way they speak to Iranians. When he says, ‘Iran must surrender,’ it is clear he’s not familiar with the Iranian people.”
Larijani then mentioned Kissinger. “He should have paid more attention to the words of Mr. Kissinger, who was a Republican. Mr. Kissinger said that after the World War, we divided the [Middle East] region into a number of made-up countries with different names. Except for two countries. One is Iran; the other is Egypt. These two countries each have a long and decorated past that spans thousands of years, which still exists and will continue to exist.
“You should not address such a people in this way. Mr. Trump should pay his respects to the honorable people of Iran, not attempt to order them to surrender. There is no possibility or chance that we will surrender.”
The Hussain post about the meeting with Kissinger has gained some interest on X.
Sina Azodi, the Middle East Studies program director and assistant professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, wrote, “Larijani has mentioned this meeting in an interview. He stated that Kissinger had told him that Iran and the US need to have ‘strategic relations’ because ‘Iran and Egypt’ are the only countries in the Middle East that existed before everybody else was created.”
Amin Khorami, who describes himself as a former journalist, also posted on X about the meeting. He shared a video of Larijani discussing the Kissinger meeting.
In the video, Larijani described a discussion similarly to how he had related it to PBS. He said that both he and Kissinger had wanted to meet. He noted that Kissinger had asked, “Do you want to have a strategic relationship with us?”
Larijani recalled, “I said, ‘We don’t even have a relationship with you, and you’re talking about a strategic relationship. Why are you asking this question?’”
He said that Kissinger then referenced the long history of Egypt and Iran in the Middle East.
“You will remain; we have no choice but to work things out with you,” he reported Kissinger as saying. “A thoughtful person speaks like this when he understands the historical background of a nation,” Larijani said.
Kissinger, who was born in 1923 in Fürth in the Free State of Bavaria in Weimar Germany, died on November 29, 2023, in Connecticut. He lived for over a century. Larijani, who was born on June 3, 1958, in Najaf, Iraq, was killed on March 17, 2026, in Tehran, Iran. He was 67 years old.