A handshake between President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had the potential to be, according to TIME a handshake that would “shake the world.” Journalists and analysts suggested over the weekend and into Monday that a meeting between the two leaders had the potential to be a diplomatic watershed. Expectation reached such a pitch that Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was moved to comment dryly about the excitement being expressed on CNN.

The meeting never took place. The White House had been open to the photo-op, but it was reportedly quashed by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Some analysts read the incident as a function of subtle Iranian dynamics and camps, with each maneuvering against the other and Rouhani lacking – this time – the political capital to act independently.

The Wall Street Journal asserted – at some length – the outlet’s belief that people were overthinking the snub:

That’s one way of putting it. Another way is that Iran’s ruling clerics and Revolutionary Guard Corps remain ideologically incapable of reconciling themselves to the Great Satan. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who reviews the 34-year-history of Iranian rebuffs to American diplomatic overtures, which makes the U.S. embarrassment on Tuesday all the more acute. For days before the U.N. conclave, White House aides had broadcast the President’s desire to shake Mr. Rouhani’s hand. By Monday, the press was overflowing with leaked accounts of where and how it would happen. Having thus turned down the lights and turned up the mood music, it made the snub that followed especially potent. What the Administration is trying to spin as a function of complex Iranian politics was, in blunt fact, an expression of lordly contempt for what Iranian leaders consider to be an overeager suitor from an unworthy nation.

The NY Post, meanwhile, published a front-page article explaining that the declined handshake was merely one of three times Rouhani snubbed Obama, alongside failing to attend the U.S. presidents’s Tuesday morning speech and forgoing a luncheon hosted by Obama.

[Photo: PBS NewsHour / YouTube]