Iran’s former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter Sunday to President Donald Trump, striking a somewhat conciliatory tone while applauding immigration to America and saying it shows “the contemporary U.S. belongs to all nations.”
It isn’t the first dispatch sent by Ahmadinejad, who has counted U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama among his pen pals.
But this letter, weighing in at over 3,500 words, comes as criticism of Trump over his travel ban affecting seven Muslim-majority countries including Iran mounts in Tehran.
It also may serve to burnish Ahmadinejad’s image domestically after the nation’s Supreme Leader warned him not to run in Iran’s upcoming May presidential election.
In the letter, published by Iranian media outlets, Ahmadinejad noted Trump won the election while he “truthfully described the U.S. political system and electoral structure as corrupt.”
Ahmadinejad decried U.S. “dominance” over the United Nations, as well as American meddling in the world that has brought “insecurity, war, division, killing and (the) displacement of nations.”
He also acknowledged the some 1 million people of Iranian descent living in America, saying that U.S. policies should “value respect toward the diversity of nations and races.”
“In other words, the contemporary U.S. belongs to all nations, including the natives of the land,” he wrote. “No one may consider themselves the owner and view others as guests or immigrants.”
It isn’t the first dispatch sent by Ahmadinejad, who has counted U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama among his pen pals.
But this letter, weighing in at over 3,500 words, comes as criticism of Trump over his travel ban affecting seven Muslim-majority countries including Iran mounts in Tehran.
It also may serve to burnish Ahmadinejad’s image domestically after the nation’s Supreme Leader warned him not to run in Iran’s upcoming May presidential election.
In the letter, published by Iranian media outlets, Ahmadinejad noted Trump won the election while he “truthfully described the U.S. political system and electoral structure as corrupt.”
Ahmadinejad decried U.S. “dominance” over the United Nations, as well as American meddling in the world that has brought “insecurity, war, division, killing and (the) displacement of nations.”
He also acknowledged the some 1 million people of Iranian descent living in America, saying that U.S. policies should “value respect toward the diversity of nations and races.”
“In other words, the contemporary U.S. belongs to all nations, including the natives of the land,” he wrote. “No one may consider themselves the owner and view others as guests or immigrants.”
