Four years ago, when some people still believed that a personal intervention by Barack Obama had the power to unlock foreign-policy stalemates, the American president sent a video greeting to the Iranian people offering a "new beginning" in bilateral relations-only to see his offer scorned by the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, as a "slogan". Addressing the un General Assembly on September 24th, a very different Mr Obama-older, warier and weighed down by the knowledge that many Americans are sick of foreign interventions, especially in the Muslim world-made a fresh offer to talk to Iran about its feared nuclear programme. Although Mr Khamenei and the recently elected Iranian president, Hassan Rohani, have made several unexpected gestures of goodwill in recent weeks, this time round Mr Obama made no flowery references to friendship. Instead, he noted the two leaders' assurances that Iran will never develop nuclear weapons and called for their conciliatory words to be matched with "transparent and verifiable" actions.
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