U.S. Must Figure Out Puzzle That Is Iran Before Diplomatic
Ties Can Be Renewed
By Hugh Pope
Wall Street Journal
Feb. 21, 2001
I veil my words in curtains, friends Let balladeers tease out their
ends -- Hafez, 14th-century Persian poet
SHIRAZ, Iran -- The U.S. State Department says it's ready for talks
on renewing diplomatic relations with Iran anywhere, anytime. Little wonder:
While Iran is no longer necessary as a bulwark against the Soviet Union,
a friendlier Iran could help U.S. efforts to isolate Iraq's Saddam Hussein,
secure Persian Gulf oil supplies and promote Middle East peace.
But what does Iran want? Nobody seems to know, least of all the Iranians
themselves. Although chants of "Death to America" and "Wipe
out Israel" are still central to Friday prayer meetings all over the
country, some Iranians insist Americans shouldn't take this too literally.
"It's just a war of words," says Ayatollah Mohieddin Haeri Shirazi,
the bright-eyed leader of Friday prayers in this southern city, sitting
behind a knee-high desk in a large, white room where guests sit on cushions
around the walls. "How many Americans did we kill? None. We are not
your enemy. We are your friend. Your trouble is that you cannot distinguish
between the two."
What you see in Iran is never quite what you get. Straight talk is considered
vulgar, almost rude. Shia Muslim clergymen debate the mantuq and the mafhum,
or what is said and what should be understood. Persian poets revel in verses
about wine and lovers, meaning religious ecstasy and God. Iranian business
lawyers delight in conjuring up free-trade zones, which emasculate strict
constitutional restrictions on foreign investment.
A quarter-century ago, this same Iran was the U.S. strategic kingpin
in the Middle East, not to mention a huge market for American armaments
and other products. The U.S. broke ties after revolutionary students took
American diplomats hostage in 1979, holding them for 444 days (which makes
restoring full relations a hard sell in Congress, too.)
Today, mainstream conservative and reformist factions of Iran's ruling
elite -- which includes hostage-taking students from two decades ago --
both quietly favor restoring ties. Rhetorical condemnation of the "Great
Satan" and U.S. flag-trampling ceremonies have subsided. But both
sides want to take credit for a move that has broad public support, so
both try to sabotage the efforts of the other. (Last year, for instance,
hard-liners seized on a Berlin meeting of Germans and Iranians on the future
of Iranian political reforms to jail pro-reformers who attended.)
If America wants to reopen its embassy -- now a high school for Iranian
revolutionary guards, its brick walls painted with fading slogans and a
Statue of Liberty with a spooky skull -- U.S. diplomats must pick their
way through a maze of similar mind-games. "There's no one person running
foreign policy, no fixed doctrine," says Mohammad Haidari, 56, an
independent magazine editor in Tehran. Though he, too, favors restoring
relations, his face lights up when he remembers the pre-revolutionary day
he and a friend "beat the living daylights" out of two American
soldiers for manhandling an Iranian woman in the street.
Currently, contacts between the U.S. and Iran have stalled on talks
about exchanging diplomats and lifting the latest round of U.S. trade and
investment sanctions slapped on Iran in 1995. The U.S. says it must be
able to discuss allegations of Iran's links to terrorism and supposed attempts
to build weapons of mass destruction. Iran finds this offensive. It notes
that neighboring Pakistan has relations with the U.S. even though it has
tested a nuclear bomb, has a military regime, is cosy with the even more
fundamentalist Taliban in Afghanistan and harbors Islamist insurgents operating
against India in Kashmir. And it was American-backed Iraq that used chemical
weapons that injured 60,000 Iranians in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, not
the other way round.
For all the rhetoric, Iranian respect for American things has survived
surprisingly intact, partly because four million Iranians now live in the
West. American models are evident in everything from wide kitchen cookers
to military organization. Tehran's urban development has adopted U.S.-style
expressways. "The relationship is love and hate; there is nothing
in between," says Rocky Ansari, managing partner of Tehran legal advisers
Cyrus Omron International.
Attracted by spreading Internet access, Iranian youth crave exposure
to America and American things. But would they pay for the privilege once
a new U.S. Embassy joins battle with this pirate kingdom of intellectual
property? American software, its codes cracked by inventive Iranians, is
cheaply available in copyright-free Tehran. "I love it when we log
on and it says 'Welcome!' And all for free!" says a young computer
buff.
Conversely, says he'd happily organize attacks to block the return of
American business. He wants no truck with Americans or their global, ecology-exploiting
capitalism -- and would fight the majority of Iranians who do. "We
want a democracy of the mind, not of sheep-like numbers," he says
at an office decorated with mementos from the front lines of the war against
Iraq. Then, smiling, he adds: "Better run along now, before I take
you hostage!"
Perhaps he was joking. Perhaps not. Ambiguities and deceptions have
always been dear to Iranian hearts, says a respectable professor of literature
who wants to be described only as the "wild one of Shiraz."
"It takes many years to learn the secret," he says, sitting
dervish-like in white cotton leggings, folding and unfolding his ascetic
limbs under a thin dark cloak. "And I'm not going to tell you what
it is, because then it wouldn't be a secret anymore."
Links
