Al-Monitor - Whether Iran's President Hassan Rouhani should travel to New York for this year's UN General Assembly is fueling a war of words between his critics and supporters.

Hard-line daily Kayhan initially sparked the debate. In a Sept. 10 editorial, the paper advised Rouhani to cancel his trip to New York in order to use it as a chance to humiliate his US counterpart, Donald Trump. "Since the United States has spared no opportunity for hostility against Iran, President Rouhani needs to refrain from attending the General Assembly as an official protest over Trump's chairmanship [of an agenda item] at the Security Council," said the editorial.

According to Kayhan, such a decision could be a "tooth-breaking response to Trump's incessant insults against the Islamic Republic and the Iranian nation." Kayhan further downplayed Rouhani's previous trips to New York as bearing no fruit, implying that Iran will lose nothing by refusing to participate.

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