NEW YORK—after exchanging notes during fourth-period study hall earlier in the day, President Obama called President Hassan Rouhani of Iran yesterday. The two spoke for about fifteen minutes and agreed that they would stay in touch.
“Boy, is Barack relieved,” said Vice-President Joe Biden. “He’d been working his nerve up to do this all week, you know? And I was, like, just call him already. What’s the worst thing that can happen, aside from alienating Israel and creating chaos in the Middle East?”
Several of Obama’s aides gathered in the Oval Office to listen in on the call and dissect it afterwards.
“I mean, I think Hassan likes him, you know? I just don’t know if he LIKES-him-likes-him,” said Secretary of State John Kerry. “Afterwards, we spent a lot of time with Barack drafting text messages to send Hassan, but none of them had exactly the right tone, so we decided to just play it cool, you know?”
Towards the end of the call, sources report, Obama suggested that he and Rouhani could “maybe go to the mall some time, or, you know, thrash out a comprehensive monitoring program for uranium enrichment.” Rouhani was apparently encouraging but non-committal.
But, still, “this is a big step forward,” said Biden. “If Barack can get on the phone to Hassan, maybe eventually he’ll work his way up to calling someone really intimidating, like the House Republicans.”