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Tragedy prompts rethink in US-Iran
ties
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON
- The earthquake that leveled the ancient city of Bam in
Iran last week appears to have provided an opening for
pro-detente forces in both Washington and Tehran.
Washington's sympathy, expressed dramatically in
the dispatch of relief workers and a dozen planeloads of
emergency aid, elicited warm words from Iran's reformist
President Mohammed Khatami and from conservative leaders
and media in Tehran. Up to 50,000 people have died in
the earthquake that hit Bam just before dawn on December
26.
Reports on Friday that the George W Bush
administration had proposed sending a delegation led by
former head of the American Red Cross, Senator Elizabeth
Dole, to discuss additional assistance fueled hopes that
the two countries could establish a more businesslike
relationship.
"I hope both sides will use this
opportunity to break the ice and move forward in a
positive direction," Geoffrey Kemp, Middle East adviser
to former president Ronald Reagan and currently with the
Nixon Center told IPS. "But it's too early to tell," he
added, noting likely opposition in both capitals.
Indeed, without explicitly rejecting the
proposed visit, Tehran asked that Dole's trip be "held
in abeyance" for the time being, the State Department
announced later on Friday. However, on Sunday, Iranian
foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told
reporters that "the time for such a visit has not yet
come".
Earlier, Iran's hardline state radio had
aired that Washington was using publicity over aid "to
implement [its] duplicitous policy of creating a rift
between the Iranian nation and government".
To
some extent, such a reaction was to be expected, says
James Bill, a veteran Iran analyst at the William and
Mary University in Virginia. A visit by Dole "may be too
high profile", he said. "The US should know it has to
adopt a quiet diplomatic approach in which the table is
set behind the scenes. Sending high-level politicians is
questionable."
But the fact that Bush endorsed a
trip by Dole, wife of 1986 Republican presidential
candidate Robert Dole, appeared to confirm that the
momentum now lies with foreign policy "realists" at the
State Department. This group has been fighting a long,
uphill battle against hawks who succeeded two years ago
in having Bush name Tehran as part of an "axis of evil"
along with Iraq and North Korea.
"Well before
the earthquake there were already clear indications that
the realists in the administration were being heard and
that their perspective was getting more attention than
in the past," says Gary Sick, former president Jimmy
Carter's top Iran aide who now teaches at Columbia
University.
"While there was no full-scale
change of policy towards Iran, the people who believe in
greater engagement were on the ascendant," he says. Sick
points to high-profile statements over the past several
months by Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy
Richard Armitage in favor of resuming a dialogue with
Iran.
The dialogue was cut off last May when the
Pentagon said a terrorist attack on a foreign
residential compound in Saudi Arabia was organized by
al-Qaeda from Iranian territory. A turning point came
during Congressional testimony last October when
Armitage said the administration did not favor "regime
change" in Tehran. He said Washington was "prepared to
engage in limited discussions with the government of
Iran about areas of mutual interest, as appropriate".
At the same time, Washington announced its
backing for a European initiative to persuade Tehran to
accept stricter international inspections of its nuclear
sites and suspend production of enriched uranium. Tehran
signed a special protocol of the International Atomic
Energy Agency two weeks ago. The move was praised by
Powell and subsequently noted by Bush. This led former
United Nations ambassador Thomas Pickering, one of
Washington's most influential foreign policy thinkers,
to propose in the Washington Post a detailed set of quid
pro quos that would satisfy US fears about Iran's
nuclear program and Tehran's fears about its security.
Several key US allies in the Arab world,
particularly Jordan's King Abdullah, have also helped
the detente along. King Abdullah is reported to have
stressed Tehran's importance as a stabilizing factor in
the region in recent talks with Bush.
Many
foreign policy realists both in and outside the
administration argue that Iran's cooperation is critical
to stabilizing Iraq, as it has been in Afghanistan.
Washington's success in Iraq depends increasingly on its
good relations with the majority Shi'ite population,
over which Iran's clergy could exercise substantial
influence. "They could make our life much more difficult
than it already is in both countries," an administration
official told IPS.
"We surround Iran presently,
and we're going to be there for a long time, and they're
going to be there for a long time, and there's a sense
that now we're neighbors," said Sick. "That realization
has given strength to those who want a more businesslike
relationship" while making the decision to supply
emergency aid "a natural response".
Key members
of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) who
visited Tehran over the past several months echo that
view. "The Americans view Iran as part of the 'axis of
evil', while we view Iran as a strategic partner," said
Mowaffak Rubaie, a Shi'ite IGC member featured in
Newsweek recently as an emerging political heavyweight.
The IGC demanded the expulsion last month of
members of the Mojahadin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian
guerrilla group based in Iraq whose forces have been
detained but only partially disarmed by the US military.
The State Department regards the MEK as a terrorist
group, but neo-conservatives in the Pentagon and
Vice-President Dick Cheney's office reportedly favor
holding it in reserve for possible future use against
Tehran.
Well before the earthquake, moves
towards detente evoked concern, sometimes outrage, from
neo-conservatives who have, like Israel's Likud Party,
long regarded Iran as a strategic threat greater than
Iraq.
On the editorial pages of the Wall Street
Journal, The Weekly Standard, the Washington Times and
other publications, they have mocked Europe's plans for
freezing Iran's nuclear ambitions as naive and
commercially motivated.
They see Armitage as an
appeaser out of touch with Bush's democratic ambitions
for the region. They seized on allegations by former
Federal Bureau of Investigation director Louis Freeh
that Iranian officials financed and directed the 1996
Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 12 US
nationals, and now claim that Osama bin Laden is
operating in Iran as a guest of the Revolutionary Guard.
Last week the National Unity Coalition for
Israel, a group consisting mainly of Jewish
neo-conservatives and activists in the Christian Right
movement, published a full-page advertisement in the New
York Times. It placed a photograph of Khatami alongside
those of bin Laden, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat,
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il and the "apprehended"
Saddam Hussein under the headline: "May God bless
President Bush in his efforts to make the world safer
for all of us."
To the growing frustration of
the neo-conservatives, none of this appears to be having
the desired effect on the administration. That leaves
them to place their hopes increasingly on the hardliners
in Tehran who still consider dealing with the "Great
Satan" anathema.
(Inter Press Service)
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