As Iran Prime Minister Hassan Rouhani tries to continue diplomatic talks with the United States, officials were ordered to take down anti-American propaganda strewn across Tehran.
One poster which showed an American and Iranian diplomat sitting across from each other with the American dressed in military garb from the waist down was replaced with a poster that read, “in a world that is filled with oppression, we don’t oppress, nor do we allow oppression,” says The Atlantic Wire.
Iran is very well known for making obvious its criticism of American politics, but lately the state has been showing blatant disapproval of these signs. Many take this as an indication of Rouhani’s determination to reach a diplomatic end with the US over Iran’s nuclear program.
Rouhani has met great criticism in his country though for the recently developed diplomatic relationship between Iran and America, still fragile after years of silence between the two countries following Iran’s 1979 revolution. Many claim that Rouhani’s move to bargain with the U.S. is a neglect of the very principles which spawned Iran’s revolution.
While many are angered by the billboards’ removal, Ehsan Mohammad Hassani, manager of the nongovernmental organization which sponsored the signs told The Washington Post, “If the end result would be an intensifying and ultimately bursting out of revolutionary anger [...] then let them beat their drums in the media.”