And while Mr. Obama is open to direct talks, the official said, they will not necessarily be leader to leader. Those actions, along with the changed diplomatic tone, have convinced some experts that the changes are more than cosmetic. Mr. Rouhani will present Iran’s new face to world next week with an address to the United Nations General Assembly, an evening speech to the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society, and a television interviews with Charlie Rose and CNN. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 In an opinion essay published in The Washington Post on Friday, Mr. Rouhani said world leaders should “seize the opportunity presented by Iran’s recent election.” 
 
 “I urge them to make the most of the mandate for prudent engagement that my people have given me and to respond genuinely to my government’s efforts to engage in constructive dialogue,” he wrote. Having promised as a candidate to extend an olive branch to old enemies, he sent a letter early in his first term to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, proposing a new diplomatic chapter. Rouhani is set to address the U.N. on Tuesday. Mr. Rouhani said in an NBC News interview broadcast on Wednesday that the tone of Mr. Obama’s letter was “positive and constructive.” He added, “It could be subtle and tiny steps for a very important future.” 
 
 Mr. Obama, speaking to the Spanish-language network Telemundo on Tuesday, said there were indications that Mr. Rouhani “is somebody who is looking to open dialogue with the West and with the United States, in a way that we haven’t seen in the past. But to move beyond impasses, whether in relation to Syria, my country’s nuclear program or its relations with the United States, we need to aim higher. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 “The world must know that time is not unlimited for solving the nuclear problem,” Mr. Rouhani said in his first live television interview on Iranian state television, on Sept. 10. “There’s no question that the new Iranian government has been taking a different approach in the things that it has said about a lot of issues,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday. That endorsement brings an air of authority to Rouhani’s calls for increased openness toward the West, said Dennis Ross, a former senior adviser on the Middle East to the Obama White House. “He wants to end the sanctions and knows he does not have a lot of time to deliver — Iranian presidents have some space in their first year and then it declines.”
– Iran thinks it's poised to finally bury the hatchet with the US and strike a sanctions-ending nuclear deal—because officials believe President Obama offered that kind of rapprochement in his letter to newly-elected moderate Hasan Rouhani, a top Iranian adviser tells the New York Times. In Iran's reading, Obama offered face-to-face talks and promised to lift sanctions if Rouhani demonstrates a willingness to "keep your commitments and remove ambiguities." But Washington's interpretation is much less dramatic; an official says Obama wasn't necessarily promising leader-to-leader talks, or any specific sanction action. Rouhani wants to strike a quick deal in the next six months, before parliamentary elections begin. The normally politically powerful military is currently defanged, and Ayatollah Khamenei appears to be on board. In the meantime Rouhani's on a charm offensive. He wrote an op-ed in today's Washington Post in which he offers to "help facilitate dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition," and promises an attempt to "move beyond impasses" with regard to Iran's nuclear program. He's on the interview circuit as well, with one coming up with Charlie Rose. Next week he'll give his first UN address, and for once the US may not walk out, the Post reports. Obama is speaking the same day, so the two might even meet.