Iran Divided Over What To Do With U.S.-Led Iraq

by Ramim Mostaghim

"For the time being, America is Iran's next-door neighbor, and will be there for two years," columnist Ali Salehabadi wrote in the reformist daily Habastegi. "This phenomenon is very threatening and complicated. We should therefore adopt a strategy with America cautiously, and based on a clear vision. Whether we cooperate with America or not, we need a correct response."

Few agree in Teheran what that correct response should be.

Divisions over the U.S. are widening by the day. Publications like Yaletharat and Dokoheh, which are the mouthpieces of radical militias, want to provoke confrontation with U.S. forces. They focus on the human toll of the Iraq war, and project Osama bin Laden and the Taliban as a form of resistance against invasion.

Publications like Resalat and Kayhan on the other hand are calling for a more pragmatic approach, and for the two camps to come to some form of consensus.

"Ballot boxes are necessary to give legitimacy to a system, but they are not sufficient," columnist Naser Emani writes in the conservative Resalat. "To close the gap between the ruled and the rulers, both camps must find methods to unify values and beliefs shared by people and the government."

Both camps are becoming "prisoners of their own rhetoric, and neither dares to reinvent itself like the Kurdish leadership in Iraq and become a friend of America," says dissident journalist Kaveh Amiri.

Amiri, who was imprisoned for running an independent news website, says the Iranian government has to find legitimacy first before dealing with the U.S. "No detente or negotiations with America are possible without mutual trust between the ruled and the rulers," he says. "The rulers must first demonstrate that they are the true representatives of their people and only then speak for them."

An influential leader who has in the past supported an improvement of relations with the U.S. says the time is not right for negotiations. "President Bush is not listening to the presidents of Russia and France, and to the German Chancellor, why would he listen to President Mohammed Khattami?" Saeed Laylaz from the pro-Khattami daily Hamshahri told IPS.

Laylaz, who had reported a consensus between conservative and reformist groups on improving relations with the U.S. earlier, now sees it falling apart. "Over the past four years developments in the domestic, regional and international arenas have made that dialogue irrelevant, at least for the time being," he says.

Sept. 11 has made the U.S. an aggressive force in the region and Iran is now flanked by two countries that are U.S. protectorates -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- he says. "These regimes have reduced the bargaining power of Iran with the U.S. If we sit with U.S. officials at a negotiating table now, we will have to listen to what they say, and so that kind of move is untimely."

The reformists, who had earlier won landslide victories in presidential and parliamentary elections, failed to translate those victories into closer ties with the U.S. "We have missed many opportunities to improve our relations with the U.S. administration," says Elaheh Koulaee, campaigner for women's rights, and champion of detente with the U.S. in the parliamentary foreign relations commission.

The reformists, who have lost ground to their conservative rivals in elections to the Islamic rural and urban councils, have now switched to new tactics in encouraging students to speak up. They have tabled a proposal in parliament for setting up student unions and have asked for steps to encourage them to become politically active.

The bill would have to be approved by the majority and also endorsed by a 12-member panel of jurists of the Islamic constitution.

"The reformists are only trying to manipulate students to secure support for their vague agendas," says Amiri. "The trouble is that reformists themselves lack a vision about reforms."