Iran’s paramount political figure, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has responded to overtures from US President Barack Obama seeking better relations by sending secret communications of his own to the White House, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Iranian cleric wrote to Mr. Obama in recent weeks in response to an October presidential letter that raised the possibility of US-Iranian cooperation in fighting Daesh if a nuclear deal is secured, according to an Iranian diplomat.
The supreme leader’s response was “respectful” but noncommittal, the diplomat said.
A senior White House official declined to confirm the existence of that letter. But it comes as the first details emerge about another letter Mr. Khamenei sent to the president early in his first term.
That letter outlined a string of abuses that in the supreme leader’s view the US had committed against the Iranian people over the past 60 years, according to current and former US officials who viewed the correspondence.
The White House official confirmed that the president received that letter in 2009, but declined to comment on the content of any presidential correspondence.
Neither the White House nor the Iranian government has officially confirmed any correspondence between the two.
Iranian officials, in recent months, though, have told Tehran’s state media that some of Mr. Obama’s letters were answered, without specifying by whom.