Word: ayatollahs
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...Hassan Rohani is representative of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, on the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and Iran's former top nuclear negotiator
...document, written by a top Iranian official and given to TIME just before Ahmadinejad's letter was made public, offers a more concrete foundation for negotiations to resolve the nuclear impasse. In the two-page memorandum, intended for publication in the West, Hassan Rohani,representative of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, on the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and Iran's former top nuclear negotiator, defends Iran's nuclear posture, decries American bullying, and puts forward a plan to remove the nuclear issue from the U.N. Security Council and return it to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA...
...views carry weight, because Rohani, who served for 16 years as the top official at the SNSC, has been close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini. "In the context of Iran's domestic politics, which is the driving force behind Iran's nuclear initiative, Rohani's proposals are significant because they have the imprimatur of the Supreme Leader, who would have approved them in advance," says William Samii, the longtime senior Iran analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty...
...number of discreet approaches and also public statements expressing a willingness to negotiate. Senior former State Department and NSC officials have indicated that Tehran sought, in a message relayed via Swiss diplomats, to initiate talks on all matters of concern to Washington, with the blessing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in mid-2003, but were rebuffed by Bush Administration hawks. Iranian leaders also reportedly made a similar call for secret negotiations on all matters of concern when Iraq's President Jalal Talabani late last year conveyed a U.S. proposal for talks specifically on Iraq. More recently, a number...
...Sadr. Both men have been accused of having a sectarian outlook despite their public embrace of national unity; both are Iraqi nationalists who oppose the dismembering of Iraq into semi-autonomous mini states; both would also abide by the wishes of Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who helped pave the way for this deal...