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The White House is confirming that President Barack Obama received a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month.

"Yes, President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to the President in March," National Security Council spokesman Michael Hammer told POLITICO Saturday. "We are not going to get into details on the content of the correspondence at this time."

Ahmadinejad discussed sending a letter to Obama in an interview with Iranian state television on Tuesday.

“I have written a letter to Obama which will be published soon,” Ahmadinejad said in the television interview, as reported by the IRNA news agency.

"I sent him a message and told him that we welcome change, but we didn’t see any genuine change,” Ahmadinejad said.

The "nuclear issue is actually an excuse," Ahmadinejad continued. The "U.S. has two options. Either to continue this wrong policy, or to cooperate with Iran. Cooperation is of course better for both of us.”

Ahmadinejad's disclosure this week of the letter he sent to Obama last month would seem to be part of a wider effort to persuade some countries still on the fence about voting for a new United Nations Security Council resolution on Iran that he's still trying to diplomatically engage, and to push back on the perception domestically that Iran is becoming increasingly internationally isolated.

Ahmadinejad's televised interview coincided with Obama’s hosting of a nuclear security summit, wh... >>>