WASHINGTON — Signaling a possible thaw in long-frozen relations, the Obama administration and the new leadership in Iran are communicating about Syria and are moving behind the scenes toward direct talks that both governments hope can ease the escalating confrontation over Tehran's nuclear program. 
 
 President Obama reportedly reached out to Iran's relatively moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, through an exchange of letters in recent weeks. The pragmatist cleric is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, and after years of the United States cold-shouldering his ultraconservative predecessor, U.S. officials say it's possible they will meet with Rouhani on the sidelines. 
 
 Beyond that, U.S. and Iranian officials are tentatively laying the groundwork for potential face-to-face talks between the two governments, the first in the rancorous 34 years since radical students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and founded the Islamic theocracy. Diplomatic relations have been broken ever since. 
 
 Both governments have issued conciliatory public statements in recent days that suggest a new willingness to scale back the tension. 
 
 Obama suggested in four TV interviews this week, for example, that Iran had played a constructive role in pushing Syrian President Bashar Assad to refrain from using chemical weapons. Iran is one of Syria's closest allies and supplies conventional arms to Assad's forces, so Rouhani may have considerable leverage in the Russian-led effort to disarm Syria of its toxic weapons. 
 
 "You know, one reason that this may have a chance of success is that even Syria's allies, like Iran, detest chemical weapons," Obama told CNN. "Iran, you know, unfortunately was the target of chemical weapons at the hands of Saddam Hussein back during the Iraq-Iran War.... And you know, I suspect that some of Assad's allies recognize the mistake he made in using these weapons and it may be that he is under pressure from them as well." 
 
 Washington and Tehran have exchanged private messages about the civil war in Syria, according to Iran's new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, although he didn't reveal the substance. Analysts say Iran is trying to avoid having the Syrian chemical weapons crisis damage prospects for a potential resolution of Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West. 
 
 Zarif's prominent role marks a clear shift in Tehran. The graduate of San Francisco State University and the University of Denver, and a popular diplomat when he was Iran's envoy to the United Nations from 2002 to 2007, has been named to lead Iran's nuclear negotiating team. 
 
 Rouhani was elected in June after promising voters he would allow greater personal freedom and strengthen the economy. 
 
 Since he took office, Iran has scaled back its anti-Western invective and muted the Holocaust denials associated with the previous president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In perhaps the most jaw-dropping sign of change, Rouhani apparently sent a tweet this month wishing Jews a happy Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. 
 
 White House officials said Wednesday that they wouldn't confirm or comment on Obama's private correspondence. But Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said the administration was ready to talk if Iran was serious. 
 
 Rouhani's election "presents an opportunity for Iran to act quickly to resolve the international community's deep concerns over Iran's nuclear program," Meehan said. "Should this new government choose to engage substantially and seriously to meet its international obligations and find a peaceful solution to this issue, it will find a willing partner in the United States." 
 
 News organizations closely tied to Iran's ruling elite reported that in his letter, Obama proposed to "turn a new page" in relations, and held out a potential loosening of the economic sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy as part of an international effort to persuade Iran to give up nuclear development. 
 
 Obama urged Tehran to comply with the demands of the six world powers that have sought, unsuccessfully, to negotiate strict curbs on Iran's production of enriched uranium. Iran denies it is seeking to acquire a nuclear weapon. 
 
 Obama's letter was passed to Iranian officials in the final week of August, when Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman visited Tehran and met with Rouhani, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others, the reports said. Oman is close to both countries, and Qaboos has been eager to act as a mediator, even offering to hold U.S.-Iran talks in his country. 
 
 Iran replied with an undisclosed message, according to reports on the Tabnak website and the Fars News Agency. Both are linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military organization at the heart of the Iranian government. 
 
 It's still unclear whether Tehran would give up uranium enrichment. It may be trying to drag out negotiations to avert more punishing economic sanctions while the country continues its drive to acquire nuclear capability, say U.S. officials and private analysts. Khamenei, the supreme leader, is considered extremely hostile to the United States. 
 
 But U.S. officials and experts say signs continue to accumulate that Iran intends to shift from a decade of stonewalling negotiations to at least a more open conversation. 
 
 Ray Takeyh, a former Obama administration advisor on Iran, said he believed the reported exchange of letters between Obama and Rouhani fit with other signals suggesting the two governments were serious about direct contact. 
 
 They "want to get together for talks, and perhaps for sustained ones," said Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations. 
 
 Takeyh said the White House outreach marked a shift from its position during international negotiations last year. At the time, U.S. officials pushed Iran to stop enriching uranium, ship its inventory of near-bomb-grade material out of the country, and close its deeply buried Fordow nuclear-enrichment facility. 
 
 If new talks take place, Takeyh said, the U.S. team must determine if Iran's attempted image makeover suggests a willingness to give ground, or if it is aimed at evading the kind of oversight the West has been demanding. 
 
 "Maybe the plan is to rebuild the image and make themselves look like a trustworthy member of the international community," he said. "Maybe the plan is to say: 'You can trust us with a nuclear program.'" 
 
 Obama's letter was probably made public by Iranian conservatives who are alarmed by Rouhani's possible overtures and want to build public opposition to any concessions to the United States, analysts said. Though there is powerful public pressure for sanctions relief, elements of the conservative elite remain strongly opposed to concessions. 
 
 Zarif this week denied a report about the letters carried in Al Hayat, an Arabic-language newspaper based in London. 
 
 Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an Iran specialist at Syracuse University, said Zarif's denial "was probably a sign that he doesn't want to be a target of the conservatives over this." But Boroujerdi said he, too, believed the reports of the letters were credible. 
 
 paul.richter@latimes.com 
 
 Special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran and Times staff writer Shashank Bengali in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| Iran's new ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Reza Najafi smiles as he arrives for a board of governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna September 9, 2013. 
 
 VIENNA | 
 
 VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran will cooperate with the U.N. nuclear agency to find ways to "overcome existing issues once and for all", Tehran's new envoy said on Thursday, hinting at a more flexible approach under relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani. 
 
 But Ambassador Reza Najafi, at his first board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also repeated Iran's stance that it would not cede what it calls its legitimate right to a peaceful nuclear energy program. 
 
 "Based on its rights and obligations recognized under the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty), Iran is ready to faithfully engage and remove any ambiguity on its nuclear activities," Najafi told the 35-nation governing board of the IAEA. 
 
 Iran is at odds in particular with Western powers, which fear its nuclear program is covertly directed at giving it the means to build nuclear bombs. Tehran denies this and rejects any limits on its enrichment of uranium or a more intrusive IAEA inspection regime, sought in several U.N. resolutions. 
 
 Separately from big power diplomacy to resolve a decade-old dispute that could yet trigger a Middle East war, the IAEA has held 10 rounds of talks with Iran since early 2012 in a bid to resume a blocked inquiry into suspected atom bomb research. 
 
 The talks have so far yielded no results but Western states see a meeting set for September 27 in Vienna as a litmus test of any substantive Iranian shift from its intransigence under Rouhani's hardline conservative predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 
 
 Israel - widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power - made clear its deep skepticism about any change in Tehran's policy as a result of Rouhani's election. 
 
 "Iran is leading the agency and the entire world community around in circles," Ambassador Ehud Azoulay told the IAEA board. 
 
 Najafi, appointed as Iran's ambassador to the IAEA after Rouhani took office on August 3, cited a strong political will on Tehran's part to "constructively interact" on the nuclear issue. 
 
 "We are looking forward to working closely with the Director General (Yukiya Amano) and his team in the coming days," the soft-spoken career diplomat and disarmament expert said. 
 
 "NO LANGUAGE OF THREAT" 
 
 Asked whether he was hopeful that an agreement could be reached in the Vienna meeting, he later told a brief news conference: "We sit together, we directly and frankly discuss the differences. We hope that we can solve those differences." 
 
 Western diplomats welcomed his conciliatory tone but cautioned it remained to be seen whether there would also be a change in substance following the June election of Rouhani. 
 
 They said Najafi's remarks - though short on specifics - were more matter of fact than those of his predecessor, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, who often used IAEA board meetings to rail against Tehran's Western foes and the U.N. nuclear agency. 
 
 Iran says it is enriching uranium only for civilian energy and medicine, denying any aim to acquire nuclear weapons. 
 
 Rouhani, who has vowed that Iran will be more transparent and less confrontational in talks both with the IAEA and the big powers, said this week that time for resolving Iran's nuclear dispute with the West was limited. 
 
 He said he would meet foreign ministers of some of the six powers - Russia, China, France, Britain, the United States and Germany - when he attends the U.N. General Assembly in New York this month. 
 
 A senior adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to meet Rouhani on Friday, told reporters Moscow hopes that new talks between Iran and the six powers will be held very soon and that both sides need to be flexible. Russia has much warmer ties with the Islamic Republic than Western states do. 
 
 "It is important that Iran display the necessary flexibility and readiness to meet the international community's demands," Yuri Ushakov said. "The six nations, in turn, should also demonstrate a creative approach and be ready to respond adequately to the positive steps that we expect from Iran." 
 
 Western powers, which have imposed toughening sanctions on Iran over the last few years, say they hope that the election of Rouhani will lead to a softening of Tehran's approach. 
 
 But they stress that there is as yet no sign of Iran slowing its nuclear program. On the contrary, Western diplomats say, Iran has continued to expand its uranium enrichment capacity in recent months, potentially shortening the time it would need to produce sufficient highly-refined material for a bomb. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk in Moscow,; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Paul Taylor)
– US-Iranian relations have been tense lately—and by "lately" we mean for more than three decades—but the election of moderate Hasan Rouhani may have changed all that. President Obama has been exchanging letters with Rouhani in recent weeks, the LA Times reports, and officials say it's possible the two will meet on the sidelines of the next UN General Assembly in two weeks. US and Iranian officials are also quietly working up to the first face-to-face talks between the nations since the Islamic Revolution. Both sides have been more cordial in public as well. Obama made a point of listing Iran as a potential ally in controlling Syria's chemical weapons in a recent interview, pointing out that Iran "detests" chemical weapons, having been on the receiving end of them in the Iran-Iraq war. (Naturally, he didn't mention the US' role in those attacks.) Rouhani, meanwhile, has been eschewing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-Western bluster and Holocaust denials—he even sent a tweet wishing Jews a happy Rosh Hashanah. Another sign the new administration may be different: Iran's new envoy to the UN nuclear agency says he will cooperate with the agency to "overcome existing issues once and for all," Reuters reports. He also, however, said Iran won't give up its right to produce nuclear energy.