DEBKAfile Claims: Iranian sources are first to reveal contents of - not one but two - letters Iran’s Ahmadinejad has sent to President Bush

DebkaFile:

Neither of the letters Mahmoud Ahmadinejad mailed Sunday, May 7, to George W. Bush represents an olive branch – just the reverse: Their writer takes a high moral tone and emphasizes the importance of Islam to mankind and the world. Neither does the Iranian president deign to offer concessions to ease international concerns and the standoff on Iran’s nuclear program. READ MORE

DEBKAfile’s sources in Tehran obtained access to the first drafts of two separate communications – only one of which Iranian proposes to release to the media.

The private Note trots out the Islamic Republic’s reiteration of its right to develop nuclear energy for purely peaceful purposes and Iran’s greatness as the cradle of human civilization.

The Note intended for release is longer and couched in phrases designed for propaganda effect. Ahmadinejad complains that Iran is anxious for progress in the sciences but is constantly persecuted by the forces of “world arrogance” (i.e. the US and the West). He even harks back to the 1950s, claiming the Clinton administration had admitted that the United States had then staged a military coup to overthrow the Mossadeq regime in Tehran and install the Shah.

The Iranian president calls on the United States to give up its tough positions, which in any case are foredoomed to failure and will harm its prestige, because Washington will never bend the Islamic Republic to its will - even by sweeping sanctions.

DEBKAfile’s sources add that the two letters were drafted and sent off in an effort to influence the New York meeting Monday, May 8, of the foreign ministers of the US Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, to chart a common position on Iran’s failure to comply with the UN Security Council’s demand to suspend uranium enrichment.

DEBKAfile’s Tehran sources reveal: The communications were not delivered through the Swiss embassy in Tehran as reported. Iran’s senior security official and nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani flew secretly to Brussels to hand them to a high-ranking American representative who was present there. Larijani spent only a few hours in the Belgian capital before heading out for talks with Turkish leaders in Ankara.

Our Iranian experts comment that in sending personal letters to the US president, Ahmadinejad is trying to emulate the revolutionary founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In 1987, Khomeini wrote the last Soviet ruler Mikhail Gorbachev a letter preaching him on how to react to the imminent downfall of the USSR and communist rule. The only resort left to Soviet rulers, said the Iranian revolutionary, was to embrace Islam and the solutions it offers.