Iran paper publishes interview with US official

The Iranian drive toward detente didn’t end when Rouhani touched back down in Tehran. Max Fisher at The Washington Post reports that the Farsi-language newspaper Shargh put an interview with a US state Department official on page A1, the first major foray for Persian outreach official Alan Eyre in the Iranian media.

According to Fisher, “Eyre didn’t offer anything revolutionary in the interview, mostly just reiterating the US position that it’s open to talks and deal-making on the nuclear issue, but that it wants to see Iran demonstrate its good faith. Still, it’s widely perceived in Iran that the United States is committed to not just curbing Iran’s nuclear development, but to the outright destruction of the Islamic Republic political system, so it’s not insignificant for the United States to be able to communicate its much more modest aims directly to the Iranian people.”