Christian Science Monitor
Wednesday, 20 July 2005

By John Hughes

SALT LAKE CITY – Over the phone from Paris, in heavily accented English, Maryam Rajavi says: “I hope one day we can meet in Tehran.” Then, in apology for her command of English, she says “we’ll continue this interview [through an interpreter] in Persian.”

But in whatever language it is offered, her message is one of frustration with a turn toward extremism in her Iranian homeland, and hope that what she sees as the “appeasement” of Iran by Europe and the US will now be replaced by more aggressive action.

Mrs. Rajavi heads the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political front for the militant People’s Mujahedeen that, with thousands of other Iranian exiles, yearns for the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Iran.

The recent election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hard-liner, is widely interpreted as a move by the mullahs to consolidate their power. Mrs. Rajavi calls him a “terrorist” who, she says. was involved in an attempt to assassinate Salman Rushdie and other enemies of the Iranian regime. She dismisses the election as a sham, manipulated by “vote-buying,” and the issuing of “5 million fake identity cards,” and “$15 million to the Revolutionary Guards to produce fake ballots.” But she thinks the regime is on the defensive, operating from an “emaciated base,” and therefore vulnerable to a newly aggressive policy by the West.

How does she see this developing? A propaganda offensive? A program of broadcasting democratic values into Iran? Cross-border incursions by the militant mujahideen? All these are possible, she muses, but she dismisses “foreign military intervention,” and “Western appeasement” as options.

There is a third option, she says: Western support of the Iranian people and the resistance movement – a “huge release of energy that is locked up” – in support of democratic change in Iran.

The “locked up energy” to which she refers includes the 3,500 or so mujahideen fighters being held in protective custody by US forces in Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein they were permitted to use Iraq as a base for guerilla operations against the Iranian regime. But with the US invasion, they were neutralized and restricted. The US has long listed the mujahideen as a terrorist organization for its support of the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, but its leaders argue that times have changed, the terrorist label should be lifted, and the mujahideen freed to operate against the current Iranian regime.

Specifically, Rajavi wants the US to lead the effort to bring Iran before the UN Security Council for its “support of terrorism, its development of nuclear weapons, and its abuse of human rights.” This, she says, would send a galvanizing signal to the opposition in Iran, energize cells in Iran with which NCRI has contact, and bring closer the prospect of Iranian regime change.

“Islamic fundamentalism and terror is on the rise,” she says, “and its epicenter is Tehran.”

The answer, she argues, isn’t a foreign military invasion of Iran but a “political, cultural, and ideological solution.” This must come from the emergence of a Muslim force comitted to democracy and “stopping the nuclear clock.”

Mujahideen operatives inside Iran are thought to have been instrumental in producing intelligence about clandestine uranium enrichment plants set up by the regime in its quest for nuclear weapons. In the case of Iraq, the Bush administration was burned by Iraqi exile groups purporting to have evidence of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be false.

So there has been understandable questioning about the quality of intelligence offered by the Iranian exiles. Some experts in Washington treat the Iranian mujahideen reports with skepticism, others argue that the mujahideen have a good track record with earlier such reports.

There are similar divisions in Washington about the political value of NCRI. Some members of Congress are in favor of lifting the organization’s terrorist connotation, as are some right-wingers in the Bush administration. Others are leery of the organization.

However, as Iran appears to harden its position on its right to develop a nuclear enrichment program, and the US and its European allies ponder alternative inducements or pressures that might cause Tehran to desist, the role of Iranian exile organizations like NCRI is likely to be a continuing topic of discussion.

• John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, served as assistant secretary of State in the Reagan administration.

International Herald Tribune
February 1, 2005

By Maryam Rajavi

PARIS – How should the world deal with the challenges posed by the Iranian regime, with its continuing support for terrorism, increasing meddling in Iraq and relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons? Approaches under debate range from engagement, with the hope of empowering the “moderates,” to military invasion. But the best option is to initiate change through the Iranian people and the organized resistance movement.

There is no need for war; no one would want to see an Iraq II played out in Iran. But engagement, which has shaped policy toward Iran on both sides of the Atlantic for two decades, has been a disaster, strengthening the most radical factions of the ruling theocracy.

The failure to isolate a religious dictatorship bent on spreading its fiery brand of Islamic fundamentalism and acquiring nuclear weapons has led to the current stalemate. Now Tehran’s missiles, capable of bearing weapons of mass destruction, can reach eastern and southern Europe.

No concession is going to dissuade the mullahs from continuing their ominous objectives. Only days after Tehran signed an agreement with Britain, France and Germany to temporarily suspend its uranium enrichment activities, Iran’s powerful former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, boasted, “Tehran is set to be a member of the nuclear club soon and will resume enrichment after a maximum of six months.”

The engagement policy failed even to keep President Mohammad Khatami and his camp, dubbed as moderate in the West, viable. Today, the most extreme faction dominates the political establishment, and the Revolutionary Guards control most levers of power, including the Parliament.

But there is another answer: democracy.

The more than a thousand students who shouted antigovernment slogans during a speech by Khatami at Tehran University last month are evidence that Iranians seek a change in the totality of the regime.

As a first step in that direction, Western governments must not assist the ruling theocracy. And that means removing the terrorist tag that has been put on the People’s Mujahedeen Organization. The group is the pivotal force in the largest Iranian opposition coalition, the National Council of Resistance, which has revealed Tehran’s nuclear, missile and terrorist plans.

In 1997, the U.S. State Department placed the People’s Mujahedeen on the list of foreign terrorist organizations as a goodwill gesture to Khatami, who was Iran’s new president. But after a 16-month investigation in Iraq, where the group has had a presence on the Iranian frontier for 18 years, the United States determined that its members were “protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention” and that there was no basis to charge any of them.

Over the years, many U.S. Congressmen and their counterparts in Europe, citing the group’s widespread popular and religious roots in Iran, have described the People’s Mujahedeen as a legitimate resistance movement and the antithesis to Islamic fundamentalism, stressing that it should be removed from the terror list. In November, the International Conference of Jurists, a convention of 500 human-rights lawyers in Paris, declared that blacklisting the organization was a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, the fundamental right to defense and the presumption of innocence.

The Iranian resistance is committed to holding free and fair elections within six months of regime change, to electing a constituent assembly and handing over affairs to the people’s elected representatives. It seeks a peaceful Iran without weapons of mass destruction, on good terms with its neighbors and dedicated to friendship with the world community.

More than fifty years after the coup that toppled the elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh, fate has again put America at a historic crossroads. This time, unlike in 1953, the United States must identify itself with the Iranian people and their aspirations for freedom, democracy and a secular state. Only such an approach can guarantee lasting peace and stability in the Middle East.

Maryam Rajavi is president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

United Press International
By Claude Salhani
January 10, 2005

WASHINGTON — As soon as President George W. Bush brushes the confetti off his lapels and returns to the Oval Office from his second inaugural parade on Jan. 20, he will find a series of “presidential papers” on Iran, requiring his immediate attention, waiting for him.

Well-informed Washington insiders say the nation’s top think tanks have been scurrying over the last several weeks to put the finishing touches on comprehensive policy papers, or presidential directives that would help the Bush administration formulate a policy on Iran for the next four years.

The abridged version of these exhaustive papers will be along the line of “What the heck do we do with Iran?”

Indeed, just a few days after his second inauguration, the president will be driven back up Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill where he will deliver his State of the Union address to the nation. Iran, most likely, will deserve a mention of note. It was in his 2002 State of the Union speech that Bush placed Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq, in his now infamous Axis of Evil.

Now, three years later, it remains unclear what course U.S. policy regarding Iran is likely to follow, but according to more than one analyst, the second Bush administration will delve into the Iran dossier with renewed vigor.

The Iran dossier comprises three aspects: first, the Islamic Republic’s pursuit of nuclear weapons technology; second, the United States’ accusation that Iran supports terrorism; and third, Iran’s involvement in Iraq. These are all points that the president will have to address.

“U.S. policy will have to shift to the policy of supporting democratic opposition to bring about regime change,” Alireza Jafarzadeh, president of Strategic Policy Consulting, told United Press International. Barring a change of regime in Iran, Washington should get used to the idea of a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic, as all indications are that Iran is set to follow its desire to join the nuclear club.

However, warns Jafarzadeh, the world cannot afford to allow Iran “to acquire the nuclear bomb as well as erect a sister Islamic Republic in Iraq while suppressing its own population.”

It was Jafarzadeh who in August of 2002 revealed Iran’s Natanz and Arak nuclear sites to the international community. At the time he was the spokesperson in Washington for Iran’s National Council of Resistance of Iran, a group otherwise known as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK. The United States had designated the MEK as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.

Iran’s pursuit of its nuclear weapons program is sure to continue despite periodic disclaimers to the contrary by officials in Tehran. Well-controlled and carefully orchestrated visits by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are not about to reveal anything, either, as the Iranians have learned to disperse and camouflage their work.

From Tehran’s perspective, it makes sense for Iran to push ahead. Iran has always viewed itself as a regional sphere of influence, hoping to sway the region’s policies. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution when the Shiite clergy toppled the imperial rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s theocratic regime has been trying — one should add without too much success — to export its revolution to neighboring countries. Outside of Lebanon, where the Revolutionary Guards found sympathetic ears in the country’s largely under-privileged Shiite community, repeated calls from Iran’s mullahs to the people of the Middle East to topple their “corrupt leaders” has gone unheeded.

However, now for the first time since 1979, Iran is seeing new opportunities open up in neighboring Iraq, a country with a majority Shiite population. Faced with this dilemma, the United States has three options.

First, the United States can avoid confrontation and continue to engage Iran in dialogue, hoping that Iran will see logic in diplomacy. This is the European Union’s favorite policy. “This option produced a 2004 accord with Iran to freeze some of its nuclear programs that might allow for weapons development,” Raymond Tanter, a visiting professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, told UPI.

The problem with this option is that it failed to produce concrete results in the past because Iran did not respect prior agreements. “This route is bound to fail,” said Tanter, who served on the National Security Council staff and as representative of the secretary of Defense to arms control talks in the Reagan administration.

Iran’s nuclear aspiration is also worrying other countries in the immediate neighborhood such as Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, each with an important Shiite minority. Furthermore, the speed with which the United States managed to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad is yet further incentive for Tehran to arm itself with nuclear deterrence.

The second option, Tanter believes, is for Israel or the United States to conduct military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “But because Iran has hidden, hardened, dispersed, and placed its nuclear facilities in populated areas, military strikes are unlikely to be effective and may lead to escalation and expansion of combat,” said Tanter.

This leaves the third option — and the most logical one — that of regime change. This option fits in with the hard approach preferred by the neo-cons in the Bush administration. Both Tanter and Jafarzadeh believe the Bush administration will opt for beginning a “process of changing the regime in Tehran” sometime soon after the second inauguration.

There is one minor snag however, and that is the lack of an organized opposition able to help bring about regime change. One of the main opposition groups, the MEK, remains on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. To collude with those opposition forces requires the United States to remove restrictions against Iranian opposition groups, argues Tanter.

Because the MEK and its associate political umbrella organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, have “been instrumental in exposing some of Tehran’s key nuclear secrets, President Bush is likely to favor lifting the terrorist designation on the MEK in 2005,” says Tanter.

“The removal of the MEK’s terror designation would be a litmus test for the new administration to adopt a tougher approach toward the Iranian regime,” said Jafarzadeh.

What the Bush team will learn, however, is that there are no simple answers to the Iranian predicament. Bringing about regime change through the support of democratic forces in the country, while desirable, may prove to be harder than expected.

Finally, a word of caution: paraphrasing the secretary of defense, it is true that you underwrite revolutions and foment regime changes with the opposition you have, not the opposition you want. Lessons should be learned, however, from the Ahmad Chalabi affair in Iraq and what happened when too much trust was placed in him and his organization. In dealing with the Mujahedin-e-Khalq one should recommend caution.

The Washington Times
By Struan Stevenson
January 5, 2005

Iran’s increasing meddling in Iraq and its defiance in its nuclear weapons program pose the greatest challenge to peace and security in Iraq and the whole Middle East, as we enter 2005.

By sending thousands of Revolutionary Guards and intelligence agents into Iraq, as well as spending hundreds of millions of dollars to recruit mercenaries and enlist support among destitute and impoverished Iraqis, Tehran is hell-bent on steering the Jan. 30 elections in its favor.

Its proxies in that country, including the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), have put forward a united slate, hoping to gain a majority in the newly elected parliament, whose primary task is to draft Iraq’s future constitution. The Iranian clerics have never been so close to realizing their decades-old dream of erecting a sister Islamic Republic in Iraq.

On the nuclear issue, the recent agreement brokered by France, Germany and the United Kingdom on behalf of the European Union, has given Tehran all that it wanted and more. The Iranians have committed themselves to virtually nothing permanent. Reports this week indicate Tehran has prepared large quantities of uranium yellow cake for enrichment, which diplomats say breaks, if not the letter, the spirit of the Nov. 15 pact with the EU big three.

In return, Iran received a host of incentives, including a light-water reactor as well as the promise of European technological expertise to advance its “peaceful” nuclear program. More importantly, it demanded and received a commitment from its European interlocutors not only to keep Tehran’s arch-nemesis, the Iranian People’s Mujahedeen, on the EU terror list, but also to fight its activities.

The EU’s lack of spine in dealing with Tehran has emboldened the mullahs to step up repression in Iran. A resolution just adopted by the U.N. General Assembly censured Tehran for “failure to comply fully with international standards in the administration of justice, the absence of due process of law, the refusal to provide fair and public hearings, and right to counsel, the continuing executions, in particular the execution of persons below 18 years of age, the arbitrary arrest and detention without charge or trial, the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, in particular the practice of amputation and flogging as well as the systemic discrimination against women and girls.”

The deterioration of human rights in Iran has revealed new depths of barbarity, where pregnant women and children are routinely executed and floggings and amputations are an almost daily public spectacle. The ban on the moderate Khatami faction from standing for election last February reduced the so-called democratic process to a sham. In place of those moderates, the Legislature now has 40 new deputies who were former Revolutionary Guards commanders and who have formed a hard, extremist right-wing majority to drive increasingly repressive judicial and executive measures.

These stark realities, however, have not deterred the ever-shrewd and business-minded Europeans. Claiming any attempt at firmness toward Tehran would be tantamount to starting an Iraqi-style war, the EU and its allies on the other side of the Atlantic argue conciliation is the best approach.

This deliberately obscures the fact that facing up to the Iranian challenge need not involve a choice between war and appeasement. As the exiled opposition leader Maryam Rajavi said during an address to the European Parliament on Dec. 15, “No concession is going to dissuade the mullahs from continuing their ominous objectives. … The equation of ‘either a military invasion or appeasement’ is an exercise in political deception. A third option is within reach. The Iranian people and their organized resistance have the capacity and ability to bring about change.”

As Iran inches closer to acquiring a nuclear bomb and developing, with North Korea’s help, the missiles to deliver them, the civilized world can ill-afford to be at the mercy of these turbaned tyrants. The bitter, costly experience of Iran’s people in the past quarter-century should serve as an example.

Appeasement is not the way to contain or change this evil regime. Nor is it the path to avoid another war. A nuclear-armed fundamentalist regime will not spare the EU, either. Iran’s missiles already can reach southern Europe. The mullahs are now rushing to develop a third-generation missile system able to reach Paris, London and Brussels.

By putting the People’s Mujahedeen in its terror list, however, the EU has handcuffed itself.

The EU should end the blacklisting of this antifundamentalist group, which provided some of the most critical information on Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its intervention in Iraq.

For once, we should side with the millions in Iran whose cry is for freedom and regime change. A modern, secular and democratic Iran would not only be the key to regional peace and security, but also a long-term ally as we try to spread democracy across the Middle East and the world.

Struan Stevenson is a Scottish Conservative member of the European Parliament and co-chairman of the Friends of Free Iran Intergroup in the European Parliament.

PolicyWatch #820
By Raymond Tanter and Patrick Clawson
December 30, 2003

On December 9, 2003, the Iraqi Governing Council announced that it would expel the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from Iraq. Reacting to this decision, Paul Bremer, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, recently told Iraqi television that MEK members should be settled in other countries with the help of the UN High Commission for Refugees. He emphasized, however, that these individuals “cannot go to Iran . . . they have to go elsewhere.” Despite Bremer’s comments, some have speculated that the United States might exchange MEK members in Iraq for al-Qaeda leaders harbored by Iran. Yet, any such deal would raise serious problems.

An Incentive to Harbor al-Qaeda

In the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration sent U.S. arms to Iran in exchange for the release of Americans held hostage in Beirut by surrogates of the regime in Tehran. Once Iran saw that American hostages were valuable trading items, it responded by taking even more hostages. Few would regard this experience as a triumph for U.S. diplomacy. The recently proposed trade of al-Qaeda leaders in Iran for MEK members in Iraq would replicate many of the problematic features of the 1980s arms-for-hostages deal. By trading thousands of MEK members for a few al-Qaeda leaders, Washington would make al-Qaeda figures a valuable unit of commerce for Tehran. Such an incentive would likely encourage Iran to provide safe harbor to additional al-Qaeda members in order to pave the way for further bartering with the United States.

Tehran has vehemently denied allegations that it is harboring such key al-Qaeda figures as Osama bin Laden’s son Saad or Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian suspected of planning the May 2003 bombings in Riyadh from his Iranian residence. Yet, after an initial trade for these or other al-Qaeda suspects, Tehran could simply announce that it had captured them and other al-Qaeda figures as a result of its vigilant counterterrorism efforts, whereas in reality it may have been permitting al-Qaeda to operate from its territory while slowly surrendering only a few high-profile figures.

Ensuring Fair Adjudication

Another problem with the proposed trade is that it would forestall any attempt to fairly try MEK members on credible terrorism charges. Such trials should not be held in Iranian courts, which do not deliver justice to ordinary Iranian citizens, let alone MEK members. Iran’s “justice” system is in the hands of the most troglodytic hardliners, who eschew any pretense of respect for the rights of the accused and sentence dissidents to death for such crimes as “corruption on earth.” Moreover, the UN Convention against Torture, to which the United States is a party, forbids handing accused parties over to states that systematically employ torture. It is difficult to think of a state more guilty of this offense than Iran; as recently as November 21, 2003, the UN’s Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural (Third) Committee censured the Iranian court system for practicing torture.

If Iraq or a third party chose to try MEK members rather than hand them over to Iran, it seems unlikely that charges would be brought against every one of the more than 3,000 Iranians in MEK’s Camp Ashraf in Iraq. After all, many of these individuals are children or spouses of MEK members. All of these individuals would have a credible fear of persecution if they were sent to Iran. Trading the human rights of innocent people for political expediency would be a tragic move, to say the least. The individual circumstances of each MEK member should be considered, rather than treating all of these 3,000 human beings as if they were trading cards. Bremer’s advice is well taken: those at Camp Ashraf should not be expelled from Iraq until a reliable place of refuge is found. That may not be easy; according to an Iranian government spokesman, Tehran has already “warned other countries, particularly European states, that the presence of [MEK] members in those countries will leave negative impacts on their relations with the Islamic Republic.”

Giving MEK a Roadmap

Libya’s apparent about-face regarding sponsorship of terrorism and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction demonstrated the effectiveness of providing rogue regimes with a roadmap for getting themselves removed from Washington’s terrorism sponsorship lists. Similarly, during the 1980s, the U.S. government clearly showed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) what it would have to do in order to establish regular diplomatic contact with Washington. That roadmap was instrumental in producing the Oslo Declaration of Principles, in which the PLO renounced violence (unfortunately, it did not stay committed to this statement).

This sort of approach should be taken with MEK as well. After all, despite its designation as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), the group is not particularly active with regard to terrorism. Section 219 of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act requires the State Department to redesignate FTOs every two years based on their actions during the given time period. The State Department’s October 2003 redesignation report did not cite any MEK terrorist attacks during the previous two years; after all, the organization did not even carry out any attacks inside Iran during this period. The report did assert that “MEK has engaged in terrorist activity by soliciting funds . . . by providing material support including training . . . [and] by planning or preparing a terrorist activity.” Yet, the “terrorist activity” in question seemed to be limited to protests abroad (e.g., self-immolation by MEK members was described as “further MEK violence”) and to serious but unsubstantiated charges of planning to assassinate Iranian intelligence agents. One would hope that the State Department has more detailed information that it could not release publicly. Moreover, in order to fulfill statutes requiring the State Department to detail how designated organizations threaten U.S. national security, the October 2003 report warned that MEK activities inside Iran “pose a threat to U.S. nationals visiting Iran,” which is not necessarily a mortal threat to U.S. security.

Rather than unsuccessfully fighting its FTO designation in U.S. courts, MEK would be better advised to ask the State Department to provide a roadmap detailing what it has to do to secure its removal from the FTO list. Since May 2003, MEK forces in Iraq have been disarmed and under U.S. control, so that issue is presumably no longer a factor. Many MEK members, including the organization’s leadership, are based outside Iraq; the State Department should spell out what they would have to do to get MEK off of the FTO list.

Keeping a Watchful Eye on Iran’s Activities in Iraq

From an Iranian perspective, the fate of MEK is linked to the overall state of relations between Tehran and the new Iraqi authorities. As Iranian vice president Muhammad Ali Abtahi stated, “We have very good relations with the Governing Council, held discussions [on MEK], and this decision [to expel MEK] is the result.” Indeed, many key Iraqi council members have made official visits to Tehran, where they have discussed a wide range of issues. In general, it is in both Washington’s and Iraq’s interests to encourage more foreign trade and travel to and from Iraq, so as to help restore the country’s prosperity and reverse the isolation in which ordinary Iraqis lived under Saddam Husayn. That said, the new authorities in Baghdad must carefully scrutinize the nature of Tehran’s intentions with regard to Iraqi-Iranian relations.

In September 2003, Bremer told the Senate Appropriations Committee that “elements of the Iranian government are causing mischief in Iraq, interfering in affairs through their intelligence services and through the Revolutionary Guards.” That same month, he stated, “Iranian intelligence agents have been aiding groups that have carried out violent attacks in different parts of Iraq.” Any Iranian connection to attacks against U.S. forces should be the key determinant of Washington’s attitude toward Iran’s activities in Iraq. Washington must keep up its guard against the possibility that Tehran’s intentions in Iraq are malign.

Raymond Tanter and Patrick Clawson are, respectively, adjunct scholar and deputy director at The Washington Institute.

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=1698

The Wall Street Journal
May 28, 2003
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON — U.S. administration officials are engaged in a heated debate over how to deal with Iran, which said it has no knowledge of al Qaeda leaders the U.S. says operate from its territory and warned the U.S. to stay out of its affairs.

Tuesday, the White House canceled a meeting that was to assess how responsive Tehran is being to U.S. requests for movement against the alleged al Qaeda presence in Iran. White House envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has held periodic meetings with Iranian officials in Geneva, but a planned meeting last week was also canceled to emphasize the U.S. desire for action, administration officials said.

Tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated over U.S. charges that this month’s car bombings in Saudi Arabia were overseen by al Qaeda leaders in Iran — part of a pattern, U.S. officials assert, of threatening actions emanating from within Iran. Some U.S. officials say intelligence reports of al Qaeda’s presence in Iran are strong enough that the Bush administration shouldn’t continue even informal diplomatic contacts unless Tehran cooperates in rounding up members of the terrorist network.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that the U.S. will continue contacts with Iran. “Our policies are well-known, and I’m not aware of any changes in policy,” he told reporters. “We have contacts with them. They will continue.”

On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran has no interest in helping al Qaeda’s Islamic militants. Some of the group’s members may have slipped into the country illegally, he said, and several are currently under investigation, but none has been identified as a senior member. Iran also said Monday that it had arrested several suspected al Qaeda members, but White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday that Iran’s response was insufficient.

As U.S. policy makers discuss taking a tougher stance on Iran, Tehran told Washington to stay out of its domestic affairs. “We hope that wisdom and logic dominates the Americans’ debates and they refrain from carrying out any interference in our affairs,” Mr. Asefi told Reuters new agency.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 27, 2003
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON — Senior U.S. officials plan to meet Tuesday to discuss Iran after authorities there said they had no knowledge that any senior al Qaeda leaders were operating from Iranian territory.

Tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated this month over U.S. charges that car bombings in Saudi Arabia may have been overseen by al Qaeda leaders in Iran — part of a pattern, U.S. officials assert, of threatening actions emanating from within Iran’s borders. Some U.S. officials say intelligence reports of al Qaeda’s presence in Iran are strong enough that the Bush administration shouldn’t continue even informal diplomatic contacts unless Tehran cooperates in rounding up members of the terrorist network.

Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asef said Iran has no interest in helping al Qaeda’s Islamic militants. A number of the group’s members may have slipped into the country illegally, he said, and several are currently under investigation, but none has been identified as a senior member. “We do not know who these are. How can we say that they are senior members of al Qaeda or not?” he said, according to IRNA, the official Iranian news agency.

Tuesday’s White House meeting on Iran, which also will involve senior State Department and Pentagon officials, is meant to assess how responsive Tehran is being to U.S. requests, sent through British diplomats and a United Nations official last week, for movement against the alleged al Qaeda presence in Iran. White House envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has held periodic meetings with Iranian officials in Geneva, but a planned meeting last week was canceled to emphasize U.S. desire for action, administration officials said.

Unless Iranian authorities take more steps against al Qaeda in coming days, Tehran’s stance is likely to bolster hard-liners in the Bush administration who have been arguing for several months that the U.S. should adopt a more confrontational stance toward Iran. Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, administration officials have accused Tehran of sending agents to foment anti-U.S. sentiment among Iraq’s Shiite Muslims, continuing to back anti-Israel terror groups and stepping up a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. U.S. hard-liners are arguing for steps aimed at destabilizing the Iranian regime from within. President Bush has said U.S. policy toward Iran seeks regime change, but officials say he hasn’t resolved how aggressively to pursue that, except to play down the option of using military force.

The U.S. is particularly interested in the whereabouts of Saef al-Adel, an Egyptian militant linked to al Qaeda who U.S. officials say is believed to have been in Iran recently. U.S. officials say they have intercepted telephone conversations believed to involve Mr. Adel or his associates from inside Iran discussing the May 12 car bombings in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, in which 34 people — including eight Americans — were killed. Iranian officials said during the weekend that they had no information about Mr. Adel.

Even within the Bush administration, a number of questions surround the recent intelligence, including whether the overheard conversations involved individuals planning the attacks or just discussing them afterward. Some U.S. officials say that, while al Qaeda members appear to be in Iran, there is no evidence contradicting the Iranian government’s claim that it isn’t assisting the group. Other officials argue that Iran’s hard-line Revolutionary Guards, who are known to support other terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, probably are providing some covert assistance to al Qaeda.

The internal U.S. debate mirrors similar disagreements last year about whether Iraq under Saddam Hussein was directly aiding al Qaeda in an alliance against the U.S. Little information backing that claim has emerged since the U.S. invasion.

“It’s unclear exactly what the full Iranian involvement with the al Qaeda people is,” a senior intelligence official said. “There are certainly some [in the administration] who take a hard-core view, and others who say we don’t know.”

In addition to al Qaeda’s activities in the region, much of the U.S.-Iran tension these days has to do with events in Iraq. Iranian officials have angrily accused Washington of failing to live up fully to prewar promises to eradicate the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, an anti-Tehran militia group that for years has mounted cross-border attacks from Iraq.

Although U.S. forces in Iraq now are moving to disarm the group, they also are insisting that an Iraqi Shiite militia known as the Badr Brigades, which was trained and armed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, turn over all weapons by next month. Tens of thousands of the group’s fighters are said to have returned to Iraq after the war and Tehran is likely to view the U.S. move as a way to limit the power of its Iraqi allies in any new Baghdad government.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 13, 2003
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON — Bush administration officials have met with Iranian representatives in Geneva for talks on postwar Iraq, but the discussions haven’t dealt with restoring diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran, U.S. and Iranian officials said.

In fact, the talks appear to have underscored their differences. At a meeting earlier this month, senior White House aide Zalmay Khalilzad described U.S. concerns that Tehran might be seeking to disrupt the U.S.-run process for creating a new Iraqi government. Iranian officials complained that the U.S. hadn’t followed through on prewar promises to shut down an anti-Tehran militia group, Mujahedin-e-Khalq, that has conducted raids for years from bases in Iraq.

“U.S. officials have shown over the past months that they are not committed to pursuing mutual respect in dealing with Iran,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi, who was quoted by Iran’s official news agency. That apparently was a reference to U.S. efforts in recent weeks to persuade the International Atomic Energy Agency to find that Iran is violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by pursuing a weapons program, which Tehran denies.

U.S. officials portrayed the meeting as part of regular contacts with Tehran that began before the 2001 war in Afghanistan, but that didn’t reflect any movement toward restoring diplomatic ties. “This is not somehow a new opening of diplomatic relations. This is an opportunity to deal with some practical issues,” said State Department spokesman Philip Reeker.

But the talks, first reported by USA Today, come at a time when the U.S. is grappling internally with whether to maintain a tough stance toward Tehran or ease tensions that have escalated sharply since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Some senior officials in the Bush administration say Iran’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and support of anti-Israeli terrorist groups make it the major remaining source of instability in the Middle East. These officials argue for a policy of confronting the Iranian regime in hopes of destabilizing it from within.

Other officials, mainly at the State Department, say that the U.S. needs to reach an understanding with Tehran if it hopes to achieve its near-term goal of building a new Iraqi government. A similar debate about how to deal with the U.S. is going on inside the Iranian government.

Mr. Khalilzad said at the recent meeting that the U.S. intended to follow through on disarming the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, according to two officials. A cease-fire agreement reached by U.S. forces with the MEK, which is listed by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, has angered Iran.

Mr. Asefi made clear that Tehran is watching whether Washington complies with its original promise. Iran fears the U.S. intends to keep the group intact so it can harass Iranians in the future. “We have informed the U.S. through various channels that there is no good or bad terrorist,” he said.