Iranian President on CNN I Won't Deny Holocaust Economic Monitor 2013 - 2014

Iranian President on CNN I Won't Deny Holocaust Economic Monitor 2013 - 2014 

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani declined to meet with President Barack Obama this week, but he made time for a meeting with top U.S. media figures.

On Wednesday morning, the Iranian president sat down with a who's who of media chieftains for an off-the-record meeting in a conference room on the second floor of the UN One hotel, one block away from the United Nations.

In that meeting, Rouhani explained why he had turned down a meeting with Obama, addressed concerns over Iran's nuclear capabilities, and, at the prodding of New Yorker editor David Remnick, condemned what his interpreter translated as "the massacre of Jews" that took place during World War II.

(WATCH: Iranian President: We will never develop nuclear weapons)

POLITICO Magazine editor Susan Glasser, who was in attendance, relayed the details of the meeting, which other attendees confirmed.

The meeting room was adorned with an ornate display of orchids and hydrangeas; a breakfast buffet was made available before the meeting. Rouhani, wearing his customary white turban, entered shortly after 8 a.m., joined by his foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Previous meetings with Rouhani's predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had been on-the-record. Wednesday's meeting was off-the-record, though Rouhani approved some quotes for use -- including his remarks about the Holocaust, which he agreed to do only after a vehement lobbying effort by Robin Wright, the Wilson Center scholar and former Washington Post reporter.

(Also on POLITICO: Rouhani: Iran ready to work with U.S.)

His first remarks concerned his decision not to meet with President Obama, foregoing a highly anticipated handshake between the two leaders whose countries have been at odds for three-and-a-half decades.

While confirming that the White House had approached Iranian officials about the meeting, Rouhani intimated he was not ready for such an icebreaker.

"This is a very sensitive subject," he said, adding "We have not talked at that level in 35 years .... We did not have enough time to make that happen."

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On Iranian's nuclear capabilities, Rouhani said he had nothing to hide.

"If there are reasonable concerns about our activities we are ready to talk, to negotiate, to reach an agreement," he told the journalists. "Whether the level is 20 percent or 5 percent [uranium enrichment], all of those can be placed on the table and examined. The end game is the removal of everyone's concerns."

Also in attendance at the meeting were ABC News president Ben Sherwood and anchor Diane Sawyer; Bloomberg News editor-in-chief Matt Winkler; CNN president Jeff Zucker and host Fareed Zakaria; Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose; Nation publisher and editor Katrina vanden Heuvel; New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., executive editor Jill Abramson, and columnist Tom Friedman; NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell; PBS host Gwen Ifill; POLITICO Magazine editor Susan Glasser; Reuters president and editor-in-chief Stephen Adler; Time Magazine managing editor Nancy Gibbs; and Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron and columnist David Ignatius.

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Toward the end of the meeting, Remnick, who had sparred with Ahmadinejad in past meetings, demanded to know if Rouhani would unequivocally reject his predecessor's denial of the Holocaust.

Through an interpreter, Rouhani told Remnick and the other journalists that he condemned the "massacre" of Jews that took place during World War II but would leave it to historians to decide how many Jews had been killed.

While stopping short of condemning the Holocaust outright, Rouhani left Remnick with the impression that he was serious about improving Iran's relationship with the West.

"My overall impression of the whole thing is that at least on the surface this is somebody who above all is interested in reversing the really consequential damage to the economy that sanctions have wrought over time," Remnick told POLITICO after the meeting.

President Rouhani left the meeting shortly after 9 a.m. After the meeting, an Iranian official informed POLITICO that foreign minister Javad Zarif had agreed to give an interview to ABC's George Stephanopoulous.