Iran Rejects Barack Obama’s Hand of Friendship

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/5026873/Iran-rejects-Barack-Obamas-hand-of-friendship.html

Iran’s all-powerful ayatollahs have brushed aside US president Barack Obama’s historic offer to end the three-decade long hostility between the two countries.

Speaking a day after Mr Obama broadcast a message inviting the Iranian people to a “new beginning”, the country’s supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dismissed it as a “slogan”.

“They give the slogan of change but in practice no change is seen,” said Mr Khamenei in a televised address on Saturday to mark Iranian New Year. “We haven’t seen any change.”

Dressed in black turban and dark robes, the 69-year-old cleric delivered his response during a speech in the north-eastern city of Masshad, as tens of thousands of his hardline followers chanted their familiar refrain of “death to America”.

Dispelling the official Iranian image of America as the “Great Satan” was one of the key aims of the Obama message, which tried to address the country’s 70 million citizens by being launched on YouTube, the internet videohosting website.

Mr Obama invited Iran to “take its rightful place in the community of nations”. He added: “that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.”

While his predecessor, President George W Bush, famously referred to Iran as being on an “axis of evil”, Mr Obama used its official title of the “Islamic Republic”, a form of address designed to show he respected the Islamic regime’s right to exist.

Yet in his response, Mr Khamenei seemed mindful that America remains at odds with Iran on the crucial issue of its disputed nuclear research program, which Washington claims is a covert weapons project.

“They say we have extended a hand towards Iran,” he declared. “If the extended hand is covered with a velvet glove but underneath it, the hand is made of cast iron, this does not have a good meaning at all.”

Mr Obama is thought to be planning a “grand gesture” to Tehran in the near future, where he will offer either dramatic new incentives if it abandons the nuclear programme, or dramatic new sanctions if it refuses.

By abandoning his predecessor’s bellicose rhetoric and garnering as big an international consensus as possible, he will aim to make Iran’s hardline spiritual leadership look stubborn and unreasonable if they refuse.

US officials believe that the lukewarm Iranian reaction to his overtures so far betrays a fear that the tactics are designed to hoodwink Tehran, rather than a genuine bid to improve relations.

With that in mind, the Obama administration is working to convince both Russia and China to reinforce the message to Mr Khamenei that this is a genuine one-time opportunity to end 30 years of enmity.

Mr Obama also wants a promise from European nations that they will support more punitive economic sanctions if his effort to engage is rejected by the mullahs.

A Washington source familiar with discussions in the US State Department said: “The big question is at what point we play the biggest card we have, which is engagement at the top level, because you can only play that card once.”

Mr Obama is also seeking to draw Tehran in from the diplomatic wilderness by recognising it as a pivotal player on many of America’s most delicate foreign policy fronts. These include dealing with a resurgent Taliban; disbanding the US military from Iraq, and addressing Israeli-Arab tensions in the Middle East.

But as with Mr Bush, the new president remains implacably opposed to the idea of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon “on his watch”. Tehran, meanwhile, insists that until the US recognises its “right” to continue its disputed nuclear research, there is little of real substance for any diplomats to talk about.

Iran Rejects Barack Obama’s Hand of Friendship

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