Obama determined to interact with Ahmadinejad: analyst

TEHRAN (FNA) - An American professor of history at Grove City college underlined that Barack Obama's administration is determined to interact with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government.

""Obama's administration has understood that it needs to interact with any government in Iran,"" Earl H. Tilford, Jr. told FNA on Tuesday, noting that the most important issue is that the American and Iranian governments should start bilateral talks.

He also reiterated that the U.S. can use Iran's help to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq as establishment of democracy in these countries will be useful for the region and Iran.

Asked about the influence of the Zionist lobby on the U.S. foreign policy and its possible effects on Iran, Tilford stressed that many U.S. Jews supported Obama in the 2008 presidential election and his administration similar to Bush's administration is committed to Israel's survival.

The United States and Iran broke diplomatic relations in April 1980, after Iranian students seized the United States' espionage center at its embassy in Tehran. The two countries have had tense relations ever since.

But the two countries' relations deteriorated following Iran's progress in the field of civilian nuclear technology. Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Also during the recent post-election events in Iran, Iranian officials found a number of documents as well as a series of confessions extracted from the detainees substantiating U.S. attempts to stoke unrests in the country.

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