Trita Parsi explains how Rouhani’s recent Rosh Hashanah outreach was definitely a tweet in the right direction:
In his UN speech yesterday, the new Iranian president continued to differentiate himself from Ahmadinejad:
Intriguingly, Rouhani did not mention, even once, the word that so infamously was associated with his predecessor: Israel (or, as Iranian leaders prefer, “the Zionist regime”). At the end of his speech, he recited a verse from the Qu’ran that talked about the Jewish holy book, the Torah. Those two choices should have pleased the sole Iranian Jewish MP accompanying Rouhani in his UN visit to New York.
Then during an interview last night with Christiane Amanpour, Rouhani had this to say about the Holocaust:
“I have said before that I am not a historian, and that when it comes to speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust it is the historians that should reflect on it,” Rouhani told Amanpour. “But in general I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis committed towards the Jews, as well as non-Jewish people, was reprehensible and condemnable as far as we are concerned.”
The Dish 