Prickly Tehran

Amidst growing tension between the US and Iran, hundreds of thousands of Iranians marked the anniversary of their Islamic Revolution with condemnation of the US and its president. Azadeh Moaveni reports from Tehran
Tensions between the United States and Iran persisted last week, but signs of conciliation also emerged in Tehran.
Following President George W Bush's State of the Union speech, in which he designated Iran as part of the "axis of evil," anti-American rhetoric in Iran had grown to a crescendo. The deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard warned on Iranian television that Iran would destroy oil fields outside Iraq should the United States threaten Iran. He failed to explain how this might impact Iran's ties with its Gulf neighbours, who supply much of the oil the US consumes.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last week that any attack on Iran would spark a response so "resolute" that it would make the "aggressors regret their action."
The Iranian state used the anniversary of the 1979 revolution as an opportunity to demonstrate solid popular backing for the Islamic Republic. Iran's massive rallies are organised by the state establishment, and rather than comprising religious displays broadcast on state television, they tend to resemble afternoon carnivals. This year, Iranian officials encouraged people to turn out and voice opposition the United States. President Mohamed Khatami called on US leaders to "wake up and change your policy on Iran," during his speech marking the occasion that he gave in Tehran's Azadi Square.
But along with the usual and expected rhetoric, there was evidence that Iran is still heeding US sensitivities. After US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld accused Iran of harbouring Al- Qa'eda fugitives, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi suggested the US should help Iran track down and locate any.
And in what comes as a long-delayed move intended to show Iran's support for the interim government in Afghanistan, authorities last week closed the offices of Afghan guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The one-time warlord has resided in Iran since 1996, when the Taliban took Kabul. His blood-stained past and religious extremism make him an unlikely participant in any future Afghan government, and earlier Hekmatyar had repeatedly said publicly he would rather go and fight with the Taliban than see a foreign presence in Afghanistan. Last week he made derisive comments about the interim government of Hamid Karzai, and insinuated that he might oppose it with the troops and ammunition at his disposal. Shortly afterwards, Iranian police shut down his offices in north Tehran, saying Hekmatyar had not respected Iran's internal security. "Iran is no place for anyone or group that resorts to mischief," Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari said.
Since the beginning of the American military campaign in Afghanistan, Iran's handling of Hekmatyar has suggested that it viewed him as a kind of a wild card it could play at the appropriate moment. The reining in of Hekmatyar is seen in Tehran as a decisive show of goodwill towards the United States and the Karzai government.
While Iran-US friction seems mixed with positive indicators, relations between Iran and the United Kingdom are deteriorating more perceptibly. Iran has rejected Britain's appointment of a new ambassador to Tehran, David Reddaway, claiming that he is a British spy and a Jew. The Iranian Foreign Ministry asserted Iran's legitimate right to vet its resident diplomatic appointees, though it did not explain how Reddaway's alleged Judaism disqualified him in Iran's view. Reddaway is not in fact Jewish, and is particularly qualified, having served in Iran twice before, as well as being a Farsi-speaker married to an Iranian woman.
The serious turn in the disagreement comes as a surprise. In Tehran, it had been expected in previous weeks that the media campaign against Reddaway would die down, and the appointment would eventually proceed smoothly. Similar allegations had surfaced with the appointment of the former British ambassador to Iran, Nicholas Brown, and were at the outset seen as a sort of hazing ritual by the hard-line establishment. "It's the usual welcome party a new UK ambassador always gets," said a Western diplomat in Tehran.
But with the American identification of Iran as a major threat, and the growing intimacy between American and British foreign policy, the rejection is seen as a stand by Iran against a perceived confluence of US-UK pressure. Britain has long held that engagement with Iran is the most effective means of influencing Tehran's behaviour. Following 11 September, the United States in effect used UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as a back-channel to Iran. That diplomacy now seems to have backfired against Britain, as Iran's snub to Britain is essentially a hard-line parry against the United States.
Britain has refused to appoint a replacement candidate, and responded by downgrading the status of the Iranian ambassador to Britain to that of a charge d'affaires.
On the surface the rejection seems a grave turn in Iranian-British relations. But British foreign policy is savvy enough to recognise how the domestic power struggle in Iran often produces worrisome decisions that are later reversed. The fracas over the appointment of the new ambassador is likely to be yet another bump, but not a pitfall, in relations between the two countries.
Recommend this page
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor