Macos – Programmatically set the color of a tab in iTerm2

Daniel's solution somehow opens a new Window – also, the exec command statement does not work as expected. One has to write text instead.

Also, you have to use

launch session "Default Session" 

in order to get a new tab.

The following does what you asked for:

tell application "iTerm"
    make new terminal
    tell the current terminal
        activate current session
        launch session "Default Session"
        tell the last session
            write text "cd ~/Downloads; clear; pwd"
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

All you need to do is reduce the minimum contrast by moving the slider to the left. Reducing the minimum contrast allows colors other than black and white to be used for the text. Here's why:

A higher minimum contrast will force the text and background to be farther apart in terms of brightness. So if you have a black background, a higher minimum contrast will force the text to be closer to white. Similarly, if you have a white background, a higher minimum contrast will force the text to be closer to black.