June 22, 2018
In the wake of Donald Trump’s summit meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, more than 100 Iranian activists have issued a statement calling for Iran to enter into direct talks with the United States.
The signers ran the gamut from the center of the political system in Iran to the far, far left—but did not include anyone from the right side of the political spectrum.
The signatories called for direct talks without setting any pre-conditions.
The signers included Gholam-Hossain Karbaschi (Tehran mayor in the 1990s and founder of the Executives of Construction political party that backed President Rafsanjani), Abolfazl Bazargan (son of the first prime minister of the Islamic Republic, Mehdi Bazargan, who was the founder of liberal-religious Liberation Movement of Iran during the monarchy), Ahmad Montazeri (a cleric and the son of the late Grand Ayatollah Hossain Ali Montazeri, the one-time heir apparent to Grand Ayatollah Rohullah Khomeini), Jalal Jalalizadeh (a Kurdish former Majlis deputy), former Reformist Majlis Deputy Jamileh Kadivar and former members of the Fedayeen-e Khalq Marxist group Ali Keshtgar and Behruz Khaleeq.
According to Radio Farda, some of the signers were among the students who seized the US embassy in 1979 in a frenzy of anti-Americanism.
According to the pro-reform website Zaytoun, the positive reaction of a significant part of the world toward the recent meeting between Trump and Kim shows that “most of the people across the world are in favor of any act supporting the safety and security of humankind.”
The statement, issued June 16, is a direct refutation of the policy stated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi, who has repeatedly said that no Iranian official will talk with any Americans about anything but continuing compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, from which Trump effectively withdrew last month.
Iranian officials have confirmed that in September Trump invited President Rohani to dinner while the two men were in New York City for the annual UN General Assembly session. But Rohani refused, in keeping with the announced policy of Khamenehi.
In 2014, then candidate Barack Obama offered to go to Iran and North Korea to meet face-to-face with the leaders there. It was seven years before Iran, in the person of President Rohani, agreed to take a brief telephone call from Obama, an exchange that soon led to the nuclear talks.