More on our partners in peace. 

COMMENTARY
by Michael Rubin
July 13, 2015

Twenty-six years ago today, three Iranian officials met in Vienna apartment with three Kurdish officials to negotiate an end to a long-simmering conflict….The Iran-Iraq War… had been over for nearly one year, and most Western diplomats assessed that the Islamic Republic would focus on rebuilding itself. They were wrong. On July 13, 1989, the Iranian negotiators pulled out guns and assassinated Abdol-Rahman Ghassemlou, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), along with a KDPI representative in Europe and an Iraqi Kurdish mediator. It’s hard to hide gunshots in the middle of a Vienna apartment building. Austrian police came to the scene, but the Iranian delegation denied any responsibility….The head of the Supreme National Security Council at the time, coordinating such activities? One Hassan Rouhani, the man whom President Barack Obama considers his partner. READ MORE