Apparently Obama’s love letter to Iran’s new president was reciprocated. Just last month Rouhani called for the destruction of Israel.
Via AFP:
U.S. President Barack Obama said he and Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, have exchanged letters, while warning that his reluctance to strike Syria had no bearing on U.S. threats of force to thwart any Iranian effort to build a nuclear bomb.
The U.S. president, in an interview aired on ABC News yesterday, confirmed the outreach to Rouhani for the first time, and said he believed the Syria chemical arms drama showed that diplomacy could work if backed by threats of military action.
Obama was asked on the ABC News “This Week” program whether he had reached out to Rouhani, a moderate conservative elected in June. “I have. And he’s reached out to me. We haven’t spoken – directly,” Obama said.
Asked by interviewer George Stephanopoulos whether the contact was via letters, Obama replied: “Yes.” The president was careful to draw a distinction between U.S. behavior over Syria after freezing military action to negotiate a deal with Russia to secure the regime’s chemical arms, and Washington’s approach to Iran as a nuclear showdown reaches a critical point.