After 20 years of estrangement, the U.S. cautiously offers to talk with Iran

By CHRISTOPHER OGDEN

oth the timing and the substance were appropriate when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright launched an initiative last week to end nearly two decades of bitter hostility between the United States and the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iran. In a speech Wednesday to the Asia Society in New York, just days before Iran and the U.S. met in an emotional, nationalistic World Cup soccer match in France, she urged Tehran to join the U.S. in drawing up "a road map leading to normal relations." Declaring that Washington wanted to find "further ways to build mutual confidence and avoid misunderstandings," she said it would be "irresponsible" if the two nations did not try to bridge the gap. The next day President Clinton backed the overture, saying that he wanted "a genuine reconciliation with Iran."

Considering that the words of Ayatullah Khomeini--"We will make America suffer a severe defeat"--remain painted in broad black letters on the wall around the former U.S. embassy in Tehran a decade after his death, the Albright overture was heavy-duty stuff. It marked a U-turn in a U.S. policy that has been unavoidably defined by the revolutionary government's overthrow of the late Shah, a close ally, in 1979 and the invasion of the U.S. embassy that year with the seizure of 52 American hostages for 444 days. That policy seemed set in concrete during subsequent years in which Iran sponsored state terrorism worldwide, sought to undermine at every turn peace efforts in the Middle East and tried to beg, borrow or steal nuclear technology and weapons. The shift had special resonance for Albright, a hard-liner on Iran who worked as a National Security Council staffer during the hostage crisis which consumed and eventually destroyed the Carter administration.

Because Iran is a loaded political code word in the United States--just as the U.S. is the "Great Satan" for Iran--critics jumped on the remarks. And why not? Albright's own State Department, in its annual report "Patterns of Global Terrorism," just declared that Iran was "the most active state sponsor of terrorism" last year. Argentina recently confirmed, after years of investigation, that Iran planned and carried out two lethal bombings in Buenos Aires--a 1992 blast at the Israeli embassy which killed 28 persons and another in 1994 which killed 96 at a Jewish community center. Furthermore, Iran has not lifted its fatwa, or death sentence, on writer Salman Rushdie. Nor has it stopped funding Hamas and Hizballah, two of the Middle East's most savage terrorist groups.

All of which begs a fair question: What has Iran done to deserve an olive branch? It did elect as President last year Mohammad Khatami, a relative moderate in a sea of virulently anti-Western Muslim clerics. Khatami, whom Albright singled out for deserving "respect," won with 70% of the vote by favoring a more open society and better relations with the West. He has condemned terrorism as anti-Islamic and counterproductive and, some analysts believe, has softened denunciations of "the Zionist entity." In other words, he's saying the right things. He's also doing some of the right things: improving relations with Iran's gulf neighbors, working to bring stability to Afghanistan and helping deal with Afghani and Iraqi refugees. At the same time, however, he's not actually in charge. Real power resides in Ayatullah Ali Khameini, the "supreme guide" cleric who can jerk Khatami's leash at will. The President therefore must tread carefully. The fact that he has brought in U.S. films won't mean a thing if he does not reverse Iran's economic crisis and ultimately secure the removal of U.S. sanctions.

Both sides must consider the overture itself which promises nothing other than an intelligent offer to explore possibilities. The domestically oriented, Republican-led U.S. Congress has been unyielding on Iran and is unlikely to change soon. But the Clinton administration would be remiss if it did not rethink Iran in the context of India and Pakistan's nuclear tests and the threat of proliferation. When things get tense is no time for Washington to refuse to speak to key players. Nothing positive and plenty negative, including the Korean War, happened during the near quarter-century that the U.S. and China avoided contact. Only when a ping-pong team helped them open talks in 1972 did fresh air begin to ease the animosity. U.S. and Iranian wrestlers have exchanged visits and the soccer players at least will exchange game jerseys, so there has been a start.

It would be a grave mistake to attach too much significance to hints of change and a worse error to let U.S. policy collapse altogether. Policymakers must beware the blandishments and campaign contributions of U.S. oil companies pitching the merits of Caspian oil and gas and trans-Iranian pipelines. Ideally, there'll be a time for that, but it remains a way down a road map still to be drawn.