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Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka ęape-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin ózeti

Dealing with Iran

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Policy toward Iran, which said over the weekend it had re-sumed building nuclear cent-rifuges, will be a crucial task for the next American president. The soundest approach will avoid the ex-tremes qf forceful regime change or abject appeasement. The president will need to find pragmatic yet prin-cipled ways of dealing with a clerical regime that is despised by most Ira-nians but is capable of causing enor-mous grief before it goes the way of other aggressive dictatorships.

The Bush administration’s stance toward Tehran has fluctuated, with periods of dialogue and cooperation interrupted by confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program, its involve-ment in terrorism, and its flagrant meddling in postwar Iraq. This drift cannot go on. The stakes are too high not only for Washington and Tehran but also for the Gulf region, Central Asia and the larger Middle East.

The difficulty of dealing with the regime in Tehran is illustrated by the recent disclosure that eight of the Sept. U hijackers were allowed to enter Iran from Afghanistan without an Iranian entry stamp recorded in their passports, although the acting CIA director, John McLaughlin, said, “We have no evidence that there is some sort of official sanction by the govemment of Iran for this activity.”

Though it is unlikely Iranian offi-cials knew what the Al Qaeda operat-ives were going to do, U.S. intelli-gence suspects that Tehran colluded

with Al Qaeda in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia and has sheltered Qaeda figures.

One answer to the question of how to deal with Iran comes from a report by an independent task force of the Council on Foreign Relations. Since the ruling mullahs are “solidly en-trenched and the country is not on the brink of a revolutionary upheav-al,” the report argues, Washington should eiplore a “limited or selective

engagement” with Tehran.

The report draws upon unofficial talks between task force members and Iranians. It reflects the judg-ment of Iran specialists, retired dip-lomats and senior government offi-cials. They propose eschewing any “grand bargain,” seeking instead a “compartmentalized” dialogue that could lead to cooperation in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also would give Iran access to fuel for peaceful nuclear energy if the regime ceases its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

This view, reflecting an establishment drive to have U.S. energy companies and aircraft manufactur-ers do business once again in Iran, glosses over the regime’s record of broken agreements on nuclear mat-ters, interference in Iraq and support of terrorism.

Even if only limited deals are to be pursued with Tehran, they will be fu-tile unless the regime there truły changes its ways and keeps its end of suchbargains.

— The Boston Globe

U.S. unease grows as Iraąi chaos bolsters Iranian position

International Herald Tribune

By Farah Stockman

WASHINGTON: Before the U.S. mili-tary marched to Baghdad to take out Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraqi and Iranian eziles warned the U.S. govemment of an unintended consequence the Corning war in Iraq could bring: the rise of Iran.

They argued that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan had already eliminated Iran’s enemy to the east, the Taliban, whose brand of Islam was hostile to Iran’s Shiite faith. A second U.S.-led war in Iraq would eliminate Iran’s enemy to the west, Saddam, who previ-ously had initiated a bitter, eight-year war against Iran.

Now, true to those predictions, Iran — a country President George W. Bush once declared a member of the “axis of evil,” along with North Korea and Iraq — is ezerting unprecedented influence in the Middle East, defying the intemation-al community over its nuclear program and providing funding and personnel for Shiite political parties in Iraq.

Despite the wamings, some U.S. offi-cials involved in formulating Iraq policy now count the failure to limit Iranian influence as one of the major deficien-cies of postwar planning in Iraq.

“Iran has the potential of playing a helpful role in Iraq, but we are uneasy about some of the actions that Iran has been taking," particularly in the Southern region, Secretary of State Colin Pow-ell told reporters last week in Baghdad.

Concera in Washington and Baghdad is mounting as Iraq’s fledgling govem-ment takes its first steps toward democ-racy.

“Iranian intrusion has been yast and unprecedented sińce the establishment of the Iraqi State,” Iraq’s new defense minister, Hazim al-Shalaan, told Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabie language newspaper. He accused Iran of sending spies to “shake up” the political landscape in Iraq.

“The Bush administration has to face the reality that Iran is now the regional superpower,” said Mohammed Hadi Semati, an Iranian political scientist at

the Camegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Pressure to decide how to deal with Iran’s new influence mounted last month when the report from the Sept. U commission said that as many as 10 hijackers had been given safe passage through Iran. And Saturday, Iran heightened tension over the nuclear is-sue by vowing not to give up its urani-um enrichment program and confirm-ing that it had resumed building centrifuges for that purpose.

Iran has said its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only and has denied meddling in Iraq’s affairs. Recently, Iran tried to foster goodwill with Iraq’s new govemment by offering to host eight-na-tion talks about protecting Iraq’s borders from infiltration by foreign fighters.

But Iranian opposition groups say that offer was madę after thousands of mullahs, informants, agents and fighters had already crossed the 1,500-kilometer, or 900-mile, border into Iraq, some-times under the guise of Shiite pilgrims.

“Members of the Iranian opposition

warned repeatedly of the dangers of fundamentalists coming from Iran,” said Ali Safavi, a former member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group with strong ties to militants. “In the chaos following the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the border was left unguarded, and tens of thousands entered Iraq.”

U.S. officials cali the possible elec-tion of an Iranian-style theocratic gov-emment in Iraq “the nightmare scenar-io” but say they believe the chances of it are remote. But still, Iran’s ties to the new Iraq run deep, and there is little doubt that Iraq’s Shiite majority will do well at the polis and maintain close links with its powerful Shiite neighbor.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of Iraq’s most influential Shiite eleries, was bom in Iran, although he advocates morę separation between religion and politics for Iraq. Millions of Iraqis are de facto dual citizens who took refuge in Iran during Saddam’s regime and are now retuming to Iraq.

A popular party in Iraq, the Supreme