Iranian Journalist, Masih Alinejad, Seeks Interview with Obama

Dear Mr. President Obama:

My name is Masih Alinejad, one of the controversial female journalists in Iran in recent years. I was the first ever journalist to be expelled from the Iranian parliament in 2005 due to my critical articles and analyses about the conservative Iranian parliament. During the judicial procedures that followed, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mrs. Shirin Ebadi, represented me, and since then she has become one of my strongest supporters.

Iranian journalists have been banned from interviewing prominent individuals from the U.S. government for more than 30 years. You may be aware that, during your presidential election campaign, a visit by 10 Iranian journalists to the U.S. was banned by the Iranian government and their passports were confiscated. As one of the active Iranian journalists with a wide and diverse audience, inside and outside Iran, I decided to overcome these political limitations and contact you directly on behalf of the Iranian journalist community to request an interview with you as the President of the United States of America.

By conducting such an interview, I may risk my political and professional future in Iran. However, from the heart of the masses in Iran, I know that they will warmly welcome this gesture and will view it as an important break with the past. Sadly, the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been the only person who had the right to travel to the U.S. to speak at the U.N. general assembly about the so-called “freedom of speech that the Iranian media enjoy”. I can tell you Mr. President, as an Iranian journalist who has worked for 9 years in the ‘corridors’ of Iranian power politics and media, that such a claim is not true. For one thing, my third book, entitled ‘I Am Free’, was banned from publication under the Ahmadinejad government (it has now been published in Berlin).

Although still a columnist for a reformist newspaper inside Iran, I am currently spending a short time in the U.K. to oversee the publication of my second book in English. Residing there gives me an incredible opportunity to travel to the U.S. for the purpose of that interview without the need for any governmental permission.

By accepting to take part in this interview, and by communicating with a true representative of the Iranian people rather than its conservative government, you will be taking the first and most important step towards breaking the artificially and politically-constructed barriers between the two great nations. The American people were highly regarded in the early 20th century in Iran, for supporting the educational and medical infrastructures of the country. It is regrettable that the relations between these two great groups of people have been so bitter over the last three decades. Despite all the hardships that the Iranian journalists face, I have never given up ‘hope’ that ‘change’ is possible in the Iranian political structure. I hope ‘we can’ bring peaceful democracy to Iran so that we can live and breathe in freedom.

Mr. President, with your message of ‘change’, you have sown the seeds of hope amongst the Iranian people. I hope an interview with an Iranian journalist becomes a defining moment in bringing about a cordial relationship between two great nations. I assure you that from this moment, the rest of the Iranian journalist community and I, eagerly await your response.

Sincerely yours
Masih Alinejad