ali khamanei

Late last night — morning in Tehran; and the 30th anniversary of the revolutionary storming of the U.S. embassy there — President Obama issued a statement to Iran reminiscent of his Nowruz message to the Iranian people seeking a better relationship. After months of official rebuff; a massive domestic uprising in Iran that continues; and [...]

Far, far more informative than this post. (Video after the jump.)

Huge piece from Barbara Slavin of The Washington Times. Before the June 12 election, President Obama wrote a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, delivered through the United States’ cut-out in the Swiss embassy in Tehran, about possible ways to reduce U.S.-Iranian tensions:
An Iranian with knowledge of the overture, however, told The Washington [...]

With a potential crackdown looming, President Obama tells CBS (via Nico Pitney):
And I’m very concerned based on some of the tenor — and tone of the statements that have been made — that the government of Iran recognize that the world is watching. And how they approach and deal with people who are, through peaceful [...]

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking at Tehran University for Friday prayers, says the elections are fair and the protests have gone far enough. According to this translation, there’s the predictable stuff about “Zionist, American [and] British” interloping, and he called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the “legal president” who is “trusted by people. ” And [...]

I’ve just conducted a phone interview with Akbar Ganji, one of the leading Iranian dissidents and most prominent voices in the international community for a more liberal Iran. He knows its brutality in a deeply personal way: the regime imprisoned Ganji for five years after he wrote a series of articles exposing its human rights [...]