Hossein Rouyvaran
Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, recently told reporters that Saudi Arabia has offered Iran with a proposal to set up a joint security committee in order to see into issues that may be of concern to Tehran and Riyadh. The proposal to form this committee at a time that the Middle East is going through the worse juncture of its history during the past decades can be taken as a good omen of the two sides’ determination to reduce regional tension and cooperate with other regional states in fighting extremism and violence.

Neal Coates
Iran Review talked to Prof. Neal Coates of the Abilene Christian University about violence, extremism, the role of religion in playing down the threat of terrorists and the significance of the international WAVE conference in Tehran. The following is the full transcript of the interview.

Richard Bacon
It’s possible to bridge the gaps that keep Iran and the West apart and actualize the normalization of relations between them. This is the substance and gist of statements made by Richard Bacon MP who talked to Iran Review in an extensive and in-depth interview conducted in December last year.

Teresita Quintos Deles
Teresita Quintos Deles says Iran is among the first nations that have started serious attempts to address the concern of terrorism and extremism in the region.

John Tirman
On the possible reconciliation between Tehran and Washington, Prof. Tirman says, “[t]here have been many cases that are much worse than U.S. and Iran that have been successfully resolved. Then, we can think of France and Germany for example; they had two colossal wars fought within three decades with each other in which millions and millions of people were killed. You know, they resolved their differences and they did so very successfully; in Europe it’s a great success story,” he said.

Jim Slattery
I have encouraged, plotted and invested ten years of my life in trying to encourage dialog between the people of Iran and people of the United States in my firm belief that if our two great nations and peoples of these countries can fix this nuclear issue, we can have a very bright future. And there is a lot that America can benefit from a positive relationship with Iran and vice versa, and we should strive for that and our leaders need to have the courage to take the risk for peace.

Mohammad Farhad Koleini
The goal pursued by most members of the Congress is to make Iran backtrack on its positions. In other words, their behavior and efforts are not meant to further bolster negotiations, but are meant to cause the failure of the negotiations and destroy any existing grounds for further talks.

Ja'far Haghpanah
It seems that both countries have a host of longstanding and fixed issues on their respective political agendas for improvement of relations. Just as put by Mr. Zarif, issues like security along common border, border rivers, water resources, immigrants, and drug smuggling are major topics on these agendas. Of high importance are also bilateral economic and trade exchanges as well as the security in Afghanistan.

John Bryson Chane
ISIS is not a religious group; they are terrorists and that’s what they need to be labeled at. They’re not representatives of Islam; Islam is a religion of peace just as Christianity is. And why they use religion is that it gives them a leg up on public relations and that also builds on the way in which the West too often sees Islam which is they don’t really know what it is about.

Abbas Maleki
We must not forget those parties that are working against the interests of Iran, and only focus on our neighboring states. As for the issue that we have been discussing here, we must try to find the country which quite recently put the names of several Iranian companies and individuals on the list of its sanctions. We must also seek out all those countries that implement sanctions against Iran. It would not be realistic to ignore all of them and just focus on Saudi Arabia because of the assumed hostility of Riyadh toward Tehran.