An American Official: Reports About Obama's Letter to Iran's Leader Are Inaccurate

A senior U.S. government official on Monday, July 8, rejected reports regarding a letter sent by Barack Obama to the leader of the Islamic Republic. According to Reuters, this senior U.S. official in Vienna stated that the reports about the U.S. President's letter are 'not accurate.' The official emphasized that the responsibility for negotiating with Iran has been assigned to the U.S. negotiating team, which is currently in Vienna negotiating with Iranian officials. On Monday, the Central News Unit reported, citing Mehrdad Bazrpash, a member of the Iranian Parliament's presiding board, that a 'nuclear message' from Barack Obama, the U.S. President, was sent to Islamic Republic officials during the recent visit of Haider al-Abadi, the Prime Minister of Iraq, to Iran. According to this report, Mehrdad Bazrpash on Monday, July 8, refrained from detailing this 'special message' due to what he described as 'national security issues,' while adding that 'this message was in line with the U.S. government's need to reach a nuclear agreement.' While Mehrdad Bazrpash had reported this letter, the Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, including 'an informed source at the Iraq desk of the Foreign Ministry,' expressed 'ignorance' about this news, according to the Hamshahri newspaper. Barack Obama had bilateral meetings with Haider al-Abadi during the Iraqi Prime Minister's recent visit to the United States and also on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Germany held in June. In recent years, there have also been reports about letters from the U.S. President to the leader of the Islamic Republic and Ayatollah Khamenei's responses to some of these letters. For instance, the American newspaper Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, February 13, 2015, that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had responded to a letter from Barack Obama, which was reportedly written in October (Mehr month) addressed to the leader of the Islamic Republic. Two days after the publication of this report, Yadollah Javani, former political deputy and current advisor to the representative of the 'Supreme Leader' in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, without mentioning the number of letters, stated that responses to the U.S. President's letters to the leader of the Islamic Republic were given in a 'respectful, reasonable, and logical' manner. In 2011, after a report in the New York Times about a warning from the White House to the leader of the Islamic Republic regarding the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Ramin Mehmanparast, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, confirmed the receipt of this letter.