REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Talking to Tehran
Is it time for rapprochement with Iran? Maybe.
For the first time in 22 years, a British Foreign Secretary walks on Iranian soil today, and no doubt with the blessing of the Bush Administration. This strikes us as a gamble worth taking, even if the Brits and Americans have to keep their skepticism well intact.
Jack Straw is in Tehran following a conversation last week between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, in which the Iranian leader apparently offered to back a U.N.-led strike against Afghanistan's Taliban regime. In exchange, the British are pledging some $35 million in aid to help Iran deal with Afghan refugees.
The overture of course is one part of a U.S.-led effort to enlist other Islamic countries in an anti-terrorist coalition. As President Bush said, he is offering these countries a choice: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." By this standard, even terrorist-sponsoring states such as Iran are being offered a fresh diplomatic start: Change your ways, and you can be part of the modern world of commerce and civilized behavior.
At this moment, we can't fault the effort. For some years, there's been a thaw in relations between Iran and the West, with the Iranian Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharrazi, visiting Brussels as recently as September 10. President Khatami has shown a more liberal face to his own people, who voted as recently as June to continue his policies and modest openings to the world. At least Iranians had the chance to vote.
Iran may have self-interested reasons for cooperating. The Shiite Persians have no special love for the Sunni Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and they fought a horrible war with Iraq's Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. The Iranians thus may see a chance to weaken their neighbors in the region. If nothing else, perhaps Mr. Straw can win Iran's neutrality should the U.S. and its allies strike inside Afghanistan.
This doesn't mean we should suddenly consider the Iranians allies or fast friends. Notwithstanding Mr. Khatami, Iran's ultra-hard-line clerics wield enormous power. Iran's human-rights record is abysmal. This is the same government that has yet to revoke its $2.8 million bounty on Salman Rushdie's head.
Most troublesome is Iran's continued support for terrorism. The State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism'' report said, "Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2000." And it added, "Iran has long provided Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian rejectionist groups--notably Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Ahmed Jibril's PFLP-GC--with varying amounts of funding, safe haven, training, and weapons. . . . Iran also provided a lower level of support--including funding, training, and logistics assistance--to extremist groups in the Gulf, Africa, Turkey and Central Asia." Hezbollah has been credibly linked to the bombing of U.S. military barracks at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.
So skepticism is in order. The same goes for any Western overtures to Syria, another regime with a long record of harboring terrorists. The risk in building an anti-terrorist alliance is that it will become so broad that it deteriorates into a one-man hunt: to find Osama bin Laden. Once he is captured, the temptation will be to declare victory, until some new state-sponsored terrorists strike.
But wars can make for strange alliances. Iran will have to decide which side it's on. At this stage in the war on terror, it can't hurt the U.S. to give it a chance to make the right choice.
