News

While the George W. Bush administration has opposed direct contact with the Iranian executive branch, and while its "Iran Democracy fund" has rendered civil society exchanges more difficult, according to prominent human rights organisations, Tehran bears overwhelming responsibility for the failure to initiate a parliamentarian dialogue between the two countries.

But change may be in the air. The new speaker of Iran's parliament, the Majlis, is the former nuclear negotiator who resigned over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's inflexible position on the nuclear file, Ali Larijani.