Iran's new President Hassan Rouhani has initiated a possibly constructive dialogue with hostile Western powers.

Rouhani's release of 11 political prisoners, his office's sending of an unprecedented Rosh Hashana greeting to the world's Jewish community, his renunciation of any desire to produce nuclear weapons and his suggestion that he and US President Barack Obama might talk one-on-one during the opening sessions of the United Nations general assembly this week do indeed seem promising.

The White House has signalled that it is interested in talking, though specifics are not yet clear.

Rouhani (below) was elected on June 14 in an election in which no women, and nobody critical of the political system and especially the controlling role of the senior Shi'ite clergy, was even allowed to run.

Even the preferred candidate of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was eliminated from the race by clerical authorities led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran is being badly damaged by a ferocious regime of international sanctions and by internal policies that are less and less popular.

Particularly hard-hitting are prohibitions on US and European banks doing business with their Iranian counterparts.

Within Iran neoliberal privatisation policies that favour business over ordinary workers and poorer people are a source of increasing dissent.

Progressive Iranians warn that it is a mistake to consider Rouhani a fully fledged reformer, but have nevertheless welcomed the freeing of political prisoners, including civil rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh.

However they warn that there are many more innocent people still incarcerated - including bus drivers' union leader Reza Shahabi and other labour, student and human rights activists.

After the overthrow of shah Reza Palevi in 1979, which was carried out by an alliance of leftists - including Tudeh, Iran's Communist Party - the theologically dominated regime which came out on top turned on its former allies and carried out mass executions.

Almost the whole of the Tudeh leadership was arrested and most were killed.

It appears that President Rouhani was implicated in those acts.

Other left-wing activists as well as members of the Bahai, Sunni and Sufi religious communities came in for similar rough treatment.

More recently, Rouhani was Iran's chief negotiator on the issue of its development of nuclear power capability, and he was secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council for 16 years.

So why does he want to talk?

The current civil war in Syria is a source of worry for the Iranian leadership.

The conservative theocratic government of Saudi Arabia is Sunni and not Shi'ite like Iran.

It also sees Iran as a commercial rival in the oil and natural gas business.

Wealthy Saudis and the Saudi government have been open-handed in their financial support for rebels who are trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and this generosity has been extended to extremist Salafi elements connected to al-Qaida.

Iran has been supporting Assad, but it is in the interests of both the Syrian and Iranian people - and for that matter, of the people of the whole world - to defuse the Syria conflict and promote a negotiated solution.

For a couple of years right-wing politicians in Israel have been pushing for the US to take, or at least threaten, military action against Iran for that country's supposed plans to develop nuclear weapons.

Although the claim that Iran has been developing such weapons, as opposed to the peaceful generation of nuclear power, is questionable and also hypocritical considering the Israeli and US nuclear arsenals, it has been used to reinforce the argument that underlies the tough sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and the European Union.

So it was predictable that major figures in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu's government would pooh-pooh the Iranian peace feeler.

The Israelis also complain about the links between Iran and the Hezbollah organisation in southern Lebanon, with which they have had armed clashes.

But the needs of international co-operation should trump the paranoia of Tel Aviv. If Tehran wants to talk, then we should talk.

This article appeared in People's World.