Iranian official welcomes Jeremy Corbyn’s win

New British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has won praise from a senior Iranian official who hailed him as a leader with a “different approach,” who understands Iran’s peacemaking abilities, British newspaper the Telegraph reported, citing Iranian media.

Writing in the Raja News website, which the Telegraph says has ties to former hardline Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syed Salman Safavi said the far-left parliamentarian has already “shaken the most important pillars of class discrimination in Great Britain – the traditional aristocracy.”

“The foundations of Jeremy Corbyn’s political thought are democracy, justice and peace,” wrote Safavi, who the Telegraph describes as an aide to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Corbyn, Safavi added, has repeatedly said “that one of the mistakes of Britain’s policy in Syria has been not including Iran in the efforts to resolve the crisis in this country.”

Iran is a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has been fighting opposition forces and Islamic extremists for control of his country for more than four years.

Safavi also said that Corbyn “believes that the West has ignored the capability of Iran to bring peace in the region. Corbyn believes that to ensure security in the Middle East, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran need to participate in the dialogue and in the exchange of views.”

The new Labour leader has come under fire for referring to Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends,” which Corbyn dismissed as a diplomatic term intended to engage with the groups. Detractors have noted, however, that his engagement has been restricted to one side of Israel’s conflict with the Muslim world.

During a 2009 speech as patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Corbyn invited members of the two organizations to address the British Parliament.

“It will be my pleasure and honor to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. I’ve also invited our friends from Hamas to come and speak as well… So far as I’m concerned, that is absolutely the right function of using Parliamentary facilities.”

Corbyn formerly had a phone-in discussion show on Iran’s state-run Press TV. The Jewish Chronicle reported in 2010 that he was admonished by Britain’s Ofcom media watchdog for failing to display “due impartiality” during an appearance on a show hosted by former MP and renowned Israel critic George Galloway.

Safavi also heaped praise on Corbyn and the British political system in a piece for Iran’s official IRNA news agency, writing that, “It is fair to acknowledge that the election of a socialist and anti-war figure in the UK is a sign of the outstanding capacity of democracy in British society.”

Britain reopened its embassy in Tehran last month, almost four years after it was shuttered. The embassy was shut down in November 2011 after a crowd of hardline Iranian activists ransacked the compound in anger at the British imposition of sanctions against Iran.