Iran political prisoners call on US to soften sanctions, open talks

More than 50 political prisoners being held in Iran called on US President Barack Obama to soften sanctions against the Islamic Republic and pursue rapprochement with the country’s new leader.

The prisoners, many of them prominent political activists, published an open letter Thursday asking Obama to shift Washington’s policy vis-a-vis Iran.

“We believe the time has come for our two countries to turn a page and start a new era of mutual understanding,” the group wrote, according to a copy of the letter published by The Guardian. “In our view, the tenure of this government may be the last chance to bring this conflict to a reasonable and mutually acceptable resolution.”

The US recently moved to increase sanctions against Iran, which are designed to pull the country back from its nuclear program. The restrictions, which target the country’s oil and financial sectors, have been credited with maiming Tehran’s economy, leading to rampant inflation, though the country’s leaders have vowed to continue the nuclear program.

The program is widely believed to be for military purposes and poses a threat to Israel and much of the Middle East. Iran claims the program is peaceful.

“The conflict has resulted in imposing unprecedented ‘crippling’ sanctions whose main victims are the Iranian people that have to live under the unbearable pressure of crippling inflation and shortages of basic needs for a decent life,” the letter read.

The 55 signatories include a number of reformists, including politician Mohsen Aminzadeh; the daughter of former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, Faezeh Hashemi; and a former deputy head of the country’s nuclear agency, Mohammad Sadegh Rabbani Amlashi.

Western officials have expressed cautious optimism that the election of cleric Hasan Rouhani to the presidency recently may be an opening to some sort of detente with Tehran.

Rouhani is seen by many as a relative moderate, though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that he is a continuation of his hardline predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Most policy decisions in Iran are in the hands of the clerical regime led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Officials in Washington have indicated the White House may be open to starting a new diplomatic channel with Iran in the hopes of ending the nuclear standoff and possibly repairing ties, which were cut in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

On Sunday, Rouhani said he was interested in swiftly restarting talks on the nuclear issue with the group of six world powers.

Those talks have stalled after several years of meetings, and Israel has claimed they are used merely as a way to buy time while Tehran rushes toward nuclear capability.

Iran insists it has a right to nuclear power, but has refused to allow nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to check plants where suspected enrichment for military purposes has taken place.

The activists in the letter, which closely parrots Tehran’s official stance, claim that only by ending sanctions, which disproportionately hurt Iran’s poor, and engaging in diplomacy can the nuclear issue be resolved.

“We believe it is time to replace sanctions with an effort to achieve a mutually acceptable resolution of the nuclear issue. To achieve such an end and given the chronic nature of the deep-rooted conflict, all sides concerned should strive for a dignified solution in which no party will be considered the loser,” the letter read. “Such a solution should be based on genuinely addressing international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program by the Iranian government on the one hand and acknowledging the legitimate rights of Iran to peaceful nuclear energy, in compliance with international legal standards, by the US and the West on the other.”