TEHRAN: At first glance, Iran’s opposition to the US and British air strikes on Afghanistan seemed a return to the old days of Tehran’s fiery revolutionary rhetoric.
The other day, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called for “an immediate end” to the strikes and said they had caused a “human catastrophe.”
And on Monday, Iran’s foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, termed the attacks “unacceptable to Iran.” His comments followed a rhetorical blast from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who accused Washington of “lying” about its true intentions, expanding on comments last week that Iran does not consider the United States “competent and sincere enough to lead any global campaign against terrorism.”
Read between the lines, however, and a different picture emerges. Iran’s official pronouncements were still couched in the language of its Islamic revolution, but analysts searched in vain for the vitriol that once featured prominently. “There’s still a bit of a fuss, of course,” said a European diplomat in Tehran.
“What struck me, though, was how muted the fuss was this time.” It is no surprise that Iranian leaders rejected President Bush’s “for or against us” ultimatum. But contrary to many expectations, Iran has spent the past few weeks pursuing a vigorous diplomatic drive to avert military action in Afghanistan.
Foreign Minister Kharrazi has made plain his disappointment that his initiative had failed. “During the past days, from September 11 to this date, Iran has employed its utmost diplomatic efforts to prevent casualties,” he said on Monday. “Our recommendations did not fall on receptive ears.”
Iranian leaders fear that the US is using the September attacks as a pretext to expand its influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus. A glance at the map shows why: American military forces are already stationed in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, while US oil companies are entrenched in Azerbaijan to the north. With US military now deployed in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and engaged in combat in Afghanistan, it’s no surprise Iranians feel jittery.
“Iranians think Osama bin Laden is a terrorist and that the Taliban were produced by the United States,” said Farideh Dabiri, an Iranian woman sipping tea in Ferdowsi Street cafe. “We believe both projects backfired on the US.”
In fact, Iran is keen to make the distinction between what it views as legitimate resistance movements and “real” terrorist groups, which attack civilian targets in enemy countries. It’s a distinction Iranian representatives will emphasize as Muslim leaders meet at the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Qatar today. Iran’s support for the Hizbullah in Lebanon, for instance, emanates from the highest level in Iran.
The government has long admitted to supporting the Lebanese fighters, viewing them as a legitimate armed group resisting a foreign occupying force on its own territory.
But behind the public rhetoric Iran’s planners are already discussing the makeup of a post-Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In substance, if not in form, their views match closely with those of the US, which advocates a transitional government led by Afghanistan’s deposed king, Zahir Shah, in partnership with the opposition Northern Alliance.
Iran also backs a transitional government that would give way to what one Foreign Ministry official has described as “a broad-based government set up under UN auspices.” —Dawn/The Christian Science Monitor News Service.