Iran's Leaders Divided on U.S.
Recent Contradictory Remarks Illustrate Debate Over Relations

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 6, 2008; A14

TEHRAN -- A senior adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has rejected a proposed expansion of the U.S. diplomatic presence in Iran, saying in an interview that the idea is a "propaganda pose."

Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, in an interview last Sunday, said that to improve relations with Iran, the United States would have to withdraw its military forces from Iraq and accept Iran's nuclear program.

During a visit to the United Nations last week, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki signaled willingness to allow the first U.S. diplomats to work in Tehran, at an interests section now staffed by non-Americans. He also called for direct flights between Tehran and New York, repeating an Iranian proposal made in 2007.

The contrast between the two officials' statements illustrates the contentious debate taking place here over Iran's relations with the United States, which were severed after the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran in 1979. It shows the complexity of Iran's leadership structure, in which politicians and unelected clerics sometimes have overlapping areas of responsibility but differing goals and policies.

Facing international pressure over its nuclear program, the Iranian leadership is now looking for ways to deal with the United States.

Samareh Hashemi, an old friend of Ahmadinejad and now his top adviser, expressed Iranian interest in negotiations on a June proposal by the United States and five other powers for breaking the impasse over Iran's nuclear program. "There is a chance for negotiations, an opportunity," he said.

On Friday, Iran gave a response to the proposal that diplomats characterized as a positive step. Details were not given. But on Saturday, an Iranian government spokesman said Iran had "no intention of discussing its right to enrich uranium," a key demand in the proposal.

Analysts say politicians and advisers affiliated with Ahmadinejad are more interested in lengthy negotiations than in restoring relations and are more influential than technocrats, who genuinely want to improve ties between the two countries.

"The group which has taken power in Iran the last years is convinced that there is no path to any agreement with the United States. They feel that the only outcome of this conflict is when one side loses," said Abbas Abdi, who took part in the 1979 hostage-taking but is now critical of Iran's leaders.

"On the other hand, more pragmatic, experienced politicians now on the fringes of the power circle are actively contemplating how to establish relations with the U.S. in order to solve problems," Abdi said.

Other analysts said the two countries are at a crossroads. "We are in a period in which confrontation with the U.S. or normalization of ties could take place," said Sadegh Kharrazi, a former Iranian ambassador to France.

The idea of enlarging the U.S. interests section was raised in a recent Washington Post article that cited State Department and other U.S. officials.

"We want more Iranians visiting the United States. . . . We are determined to reach out to the Iranian people," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters, hinting at the proposal. At present, Iranians have to travel to Turkey or Dubai to apply for U.S. visas.

For decades, calls in Iran for establishing ties were often answered by angry protests on the streets of Tehran denouncing the idea as a betrayal of the Islamic revolution.

But in 2006, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say in matters related to U.S.-Iranian relations, lifted the ban on direct negotiations by allowing Iranian diplomats to talk to their American counterparts in Iraq. The purpose was "to make America understand that they have to leave Iraq alone and allow the Iraqis to govern their own country," Khamenei said.

Samareh Hashemi's cautionary words in the interview are in line with the policies outlined by Khamenei, who said in January that restoring relations under current circumstances would endanger Iran's security, because it would "provide opportunity for security agents to come and go, as well as for espionage."

"Iranian-American relations have become one-dimensional," said Abdi, the former hostage-taker, who writes columns and publishes a blog. "Whatever both countries demand from each other, practically no measures for rapprochement are really viable.

"The United States has a certain view of the world, and Iran opposes this view. So there will be conflicts as long as this is the case."

Interests sections, housed in the embassies of third countries, are a device of international relations by which hostile countries communicate even though they have no formal diplomatic ties.

Iran has an interests section, employing 30 to 40 diplomats, that operates under the umbrella of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, according to Kharrazi, the former envoy to France.

The United States, meanwhile, is represented in Tehran by an interests section in the Swiss Embassy, where about 20 non-Americans and local staff members handle U.S. interests in Iran, Iranian staff members working there say.

Samareh Hashemi said that if progress is to occur, "the U.S. must first reform, and then we will see what happens." He said he was not afraid of military strikes on Iran. "The forces of any government which would attack Iran will no longer have any security in our region or anywhere else," Samareh Hashemi said. "They will no longer be safe, wherever they are."

He accused the United States of training the 12 Iranians arrested in May in connection with a bombing at a religious center in the Iranian city of Shiraz that killed 12.

"During unrest near Orumieh in northwestern Iran, we have found American instruments," Samareh Hashemi said, adding that evidence will be provided soon.

Iranian officials contend that many overtures toward the United States have gone unanswered. In 2001, Iran provided information for U.S. troops fighting the Taliban, an Iranian enemy. "In return, we were labeled as part of the 'axis of evil,' " Kharrazi said. "And in 2007, President Ahmadinejad wrote a direct letter to George W. Bush, which was completely ignored by the U.S."

The roots of Iran's animosity toward the United States run much deeper than the country's 1979 Islamic revolution. In 1953, the CIA organized a coup d' etat against the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, who two years earlier had nationalized Iran's oil, angering Britain, whose state oil company had a long-running lease to exploit Iran's oil.

The great-grandson of Mossadegh said he was proud of what his ancestor had done for Iran. "My great-grandfather led a movement for decolonization," Ali Mossadegh said, showing black-and-white pictures of Mossadegh pleading Iran's case for oil nationalization before the U.N. Security Council. The coup led to absolute rule by an American ally, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, until he was overthrown in 1979.

The younger Mossadegh saw no political use for an American interests section now. "First, an apology for the coup of 1953 would be an important step to restore relations between both countries," he said.

When Abbas Abdi climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, he had that same kind of anger in mind, he said. "Try and look at it from the Iranian point of view: They had really hurt us, so we had to hurt them back," Abdi said, referring to the takeover.

He said he did not feel responsible for the diplomatic stalemate that followed. "It was an opportunity for the United States to get on with our relations with a clean slate," Abdi said. "But things took a different course."

Staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.