Amir Taheri
Gatestone, Apr. 6, 2025
“Tehran’s aim is either to derail the whole thing and blame Trump, or go into slow-motion mode in the hope that the US mid-term elections might puncture the Trump balloon.”
After a three-year break, a serial that started almost 50 years ago is expected to return to world screens with a new season: Uncle Sam wooing the Mullahs of Tehran.
The new season started with a letter sent by US President Donald J. Trump to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei three weeks ago, reportedly inviting him for a face-to-face rendezvous.
A similar letter was sent by US President Jimmy Carter to Ruhollah Khomeini during his exile in a Paris suburb in 1978, delivered by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
Carter wrote Khomeini another letter a year later, when he had already seized power in Tehran. Delivered by Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, at a meeting with Khomeini’s Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, the letter repeated the American desire for friendly cooperation with the new regime in Iran.
Carter left the White House without getting a written answer to his letter. Instead, Khomeini authorized a raid on the US Embassy in Tehran and the holding of its diplomats as hostages.
Despite that, Carter’s successor, President Ronald Reagan, tried his epistolary talent by writing a five-page letter to Khomeini, accompanied by a huge cake and a beautifully morocco-bound Bible and a Colt-45 semi-automatic pistol. Khomeini replied by ordering the taking of more American hostages, funding the attack on the US Marines barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 American military personnel. ….SOURCE