Your excellent editorial “The US and Iran look for de-escalation” (FT View, August 17) needs further elaboration.
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 took place, most Iranians and historians say, as a consequence of the death of Iranian democracy in August 1953. That regime had been led by national heroes Mohammad Mossadegh and Hossein Fatemi, my uncle and the person who proposed the nationalisation of Iranian oil assets. The people of Iran have never forgotten what they lost and the role the British and the US played in prime minister Mossadegh’s overthrow.
Almost four decades of darkness passed in relations between Iran and the US, before Barack Obama and Joe Biden his vice-president, painstakingly — with diplomacy and equal measures of strength and respect — signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear agreement of 2015, starting an incipient trust.
Then came Donald Trump, who withdrew from the agreement, even though Iran had complied with its terms. Darkness returned with a vengeance.
But now the US has a president who knows more about the Middle East, Iran and foreign policy than any of his predecessors. Biden is again using diplomacy with strength and respect to put the potential nuclear genie back in the bottle, as the saying goes.
The Iran haters do not understand, as the US president does, that restoring that trust is a life and death matter. Since without Iran’s co-operation, nothing can be or will be achieved to finally bring some desperately needed stability to a region that can explode at any moment.
Fariborz S Fatemi
Former Professional Staff Member
House Foreign Affairs Committee
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
McLean, VA, US