An Iranian official said on Tuesday that handshake between Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and President Barack Obama at the United Nations on Monday “was not preplanned”.

“It was kind of accidental and happened after (President Hassan) Rouhani’s speech to the UN General Assembly on Monday,” said the senior official on condition of anonymity.
“Nothing was planned at all, and it just happened in a few seconds and they greeted each other as well,” Reuters quoted the official as saying.
It was the first handshake between a U.S. president and a high-ranking Iranian official in over 30 years.
Iran and the United States have been at loggerheads since they severed diplomatic ties shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution. But relations have improved since July when a deal ended a standoff between Iran and the West over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Iran’s Students News Agency ISNA, citing an unnamed source, said Obama and Zarif shook hands when they ran into each other at the Assembly.
There has already been some increased contact between the two sides in recent years. Obama and his counterpart Rouhani, spoke by telephone in 2013 and the nuclear talks involved direct talks between Iranian and U.S. foreign ministers.
Zarif has been holding regular talks with Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry which finally led to the resolution of the nuclear standoff between Iran and the United States.
Again on Monday Zarif, Kerry and counterparts from Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany and the EU foreign policy chief held talks in New York on implementing the nuclear deal.