TEHRAN: Iran and the United States show few signs of rapprochement in the wake of the ouster of a common enemy, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Before the US-led invasion of Iraq, Iran complained that its reward for opposing the Taliban in Afghanistan was to be lumped with North Korea and Iraq in what President Bush dubbed an “axis of evil.” Now, after supporting many of the US-backed Iraqi opposition factions and passively backing the US military campaign in Iraq, Iran is being accused of orchestrating unrest among Iraq’s Shia population.

In response, Iran has blasted what it calls the “vile colonial objectives” of the United States.

Yet the rhetorical broadsides appear to carry scant threat of hostilities, according to diplomats, analysts and officials from both countries. The US victory in Iraq has inspired a senior ayatollah to publicly float the possibility — widely sought among Iran’s population of 65 million — of re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States.

But as both sides return to postures hardened over a quarter- century of mutual mistrust, observers in Iran speak of opportunities missed, citing as an example the Bush administration’s public complaints that Iran is trying to influence Iraq’s restive Shia majority.

Despite the US protests, one diplomat said, “Our impression is they’re behaving fairly well so far.”

Iran has regarded itself as the leader of the world’s 120 million Shia since the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whom the CIA had installed in a 1953 coup.

A theocracy was installed, in which religious leaders maintain ultimate power over any other office, including a popularly elected president and parliament. Some hardliners in Iran embrace the idea of Iraq adopting a similar system.

“Of course, this is our utmost wish,” said Hossain Shariat Madari, editor of the ultraconservative government newspaper Kahyan.

Yet as a Foreign Ministry official pointed out recently, Iran’s government has called for nothing of the sort. Analysts said Iran effectively abandoned the policy of exporting Islamic revolution after losing a million men and boys in its eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. The policy was formally overtaken after the 1997 election of President Mohammad Khatami, who invited a “dialogue between civilizations.”

In the case of Iraq, several analysts said Iran scarcely needs to interfere or risk the wrath of the United States. Iran’s official policy on Iraq calls for basic democracy — one man, one vote. Iraq is at least 60 per cent Shia.

Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme is also a continuing obstacle to better relations with the United States. The Iranian government has maintained it is pursuing a nuclear programme solely for the purpose of meeting a rapidly escalating demand for electricity.

However, John Wolf, the assistant secretary of state for non- proliferation, has said that Iran has an “alarming, clandestine programme” to produce nuclear weapons. “Iran is going down the same path of denial and deception that handicapped international inspections in North Korea and Iraq,” he said.

More immediately, conservatives and reformers in Iran have united in demanding that US forces in Iraq disarm and repatriate to Iran members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or People’s Mujahideen, an Iranian exile group that has fought Iranian governments since the 1970s and was armed and supported by Saddam Hussein since the Iran-Iraq war.

The State Department considers the People’s Mujahideen a terrorist organization, but after bombing its positions in Iraq for several days, the US Central Command negotiated a ceasefire that will allow the group to retain most of its arms, at least temporarily.

The ceasefire agreement has drawn a strong rebuke from Iranian officials. The head of the Iranian military’s Revolutionary Guard last week said US treatment of the group would test the consistency of the ‘war against terrorism’.

Mostafa Tajzadeh, a key strategist in the country’s reform movement, suggested that if the United States handed over members of the group to Iran, Iranian hardliners might be persuaded to turn over several relatively senior members of Al Qaeda who fled Afghanistan and found refuge in Iran, as well as leaders of Ansar al-Islam, a Muslim guerrilla group that was driven out of northern Iraq by US forces.

During the US-led war in Iraq, Iran’s cooperation with the United States amounted to what one diplomat described as “mostly a matter of what they didn’t do.” Iran closed its border to members of Ansar al-Islam. Violations of Iranian airspace by US warplanes and even errant missiles were scarcely protested. Iran played co-host to Iraqi opposition groups backed by the Bush administration.

The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shia group headquartered in Tehran since 1980, is Iran’s closest ally among the anti-Saddam groups. But opposition figures say Iran also has close relations with Iraq’s two main Kurdish parties and with the Iraqi National Congress, whose chairman, Ahmed Chalabi, is championed by Pentagon officials. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.