Iran brushes aside new Obama video message
AP
20-Mar-2009 (one comment)

TEHRAN, Iran – The Iranian government brushed aside a Persian New Year's message Friday from President Barack Obama offering to resolve years of hostility, saying it wants concrete change from Washington before it's ready to enter a dialogue.

Obama released the video to coincide with the major Iranian festival of Nowruz, a 12-day holiday that marks the arrival of spring and the beginning of the new year on the Persian calendar. In the video, which has Farsi subtitles, Obama said the U.S. is prepared to end the strained relations if Tehran tones down its combative rhetoric.

Israeli President Shimon Peres issued a rare Nowruz greeting of his own to Iranians, praising what he called "the noble Iranian people" in a message on Israel's Farsi-language radio station, which broadcasts in Iran.

But Peres took a tougher tone in an interview to be aired to Iranians on the station on Monday, strongly criticizing Iran's hard-line leaders as "religious fanatics" and predicting that Iranians will overthrow them.

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Ostaad

Iran has not brushed aside anything

by Ostaad on Fri Mar 20, 2009 10:19 PM PDT

The fact is many Iranians have seen Obama's speech/greetings on dish or the Internet. YouTube may be blocked but there arn many ways to bypass the filters and Iranian Internet users are very savvy about getting info. I am impressed by the wide range of the views that were mentioned in the article.

Funny, I did not get the impression the Iranians were poohpoohing Obama's Noruz message. This message would not have been delivered if there were not ample "private" diplomacy among numerous channels available to both governments. I think the Iranian government had responded positively a long time ago. Let's not forget Ahmadinejad's letter to Obama way back when. Iran's price for "normalizing" relationships with the US are not that high and I think the US has agreed to pay the price. In return the US will insist that Iran must curtail its activities in both Iraq and Afghanestan. In regard to the nuclear stuff, the US will allow Iran to keep its low enrichment processing until an international consortium is formed to process LEU for Iran as well as the future nuclear power plants the will mushroom in the Middle East shortly. The market is huge for LEU all over the world because many countries are planning, and some have started, to build nuclear power plants. Iran will play a role in the consortium and the market because it has access to raw materials too. In other words, Iran wants to have its yellow cake and eat it too - make money, that is. 


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