Breaking with Bush, Obama offers niceties to Tehran. The Persians, however, are not being bought yet, writes Mustafa El-Labbad* President Barack Obama stole the limelight again with the Nowruz greetings he conveyed to political leaders in Tehran, setting yet another precedent in his administration's inauguration of a new era in US-Iranian relations. Nowruz -- the Persian New Year -- is the most important Iranian holiday. A cheerful occasion to exchange visits and gifts, the holiday harks back to the Zoroastrian ancestors of the present-day Persians and marks the vernal equinox, the moment the sun crosses the equator and equalises day and night. But if Iranian families gather to observe the rituals of these astronomical calculations, Obama had a different set of calculations in mind in what was the clearest and most direct signal he has sent to Tehran since coming to office. In his congratulatory message Obama praised the contribution of Iranian culture to human civilisation, and paid sincere homage to the Iranian people and culture by citing a verse from the major mediaeval Persian poet Sheikh Sadi of Shiraz: "The children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence." His method of extending an olive branch could not have been better calibrated to strike a positive chord among a broad audience of Iranian people who are proud of their history and culture and are fond of quoting poetry. Moreover, to drive home the spirit of his message, he concluded his address to Iranian leaders and the people with the traditional Persian greeting for this holiday: "Eid-eh Shoma Mubarak." Nor could his message signal a clearer break with the Bush legacy, a legacy of vitriolic rhetoric and threats never acted upon, of attitudes and policies that must have been the most counterproductive ever for American interests in the region. Obama issued an unequivocal appeal for dialogue with Tehran, in which he linked the prospect of the Islamic Republic of Iran's taking "its rightful place among the community of nations" with the relinquishment of violence and terrorism. As analysts pointed out, this was an offer to help Tehran out of its international ostracism in exchange for a change in its political behaviour. The offer further underscored not only the Obama administration's commitment to diplomacy, but also that the change it envisions for Iran has nothing to do with regime change that the neoconservatives were hoping to engineer for many years. The Obama overture is perhaps a greater landmark in the history of US-Iranian relations than Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's apology to Iran in 2000 for the US-sponsored coup of 1953 that overthrew the democratically elected Iranian leader Mohamed Musaddeq. Yet, the response from Tehran was not as warm as the Obama administration might have hoped. It was neither a rebuff nor a complete opening of the door. The Supreme Guide of the Iranian Revolution customarily delivers his Nowruz address from the holy city of Mashhad in which is located the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth imam of Shia Islam. Within a few hours after Obama's speech was broadcast, Imam Khamenei stressed that actions had to precede words and that his country would change if the US changed first and ended the economic boycott against Iran, freed frozen Iranian assets in American banks and halted its political and media offensive. He also took strong exception to the implications in Obama's statement that Iran could take its place in the community of nations if it relinquished "support for terrorism". But the Iranian response went beyond Khamenei's insistence upon a downpayment from Washington for improved relations. It delivered another potent message via a domain other than the media. On the very day that Obama delivered his new year's greetings and Khamenei issued his response, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki visited Mazar Sherif, in northern Afghanistan, to celebrate Nowruz there. Tehran was flexing its muscles in the Iranian way. Remember that the Obama administration has also set into motion a dialogue initiative with moderates in the Taliban movement that the US had swept from power in Afghanistan at the end of 2001. The purpose of the initiative is to seek equilibrium between the various ethnic groups in Afghanistan and between countries backing the different Afghan factions. The Taliban are the political front for the Pashtun, the largest of Afghanistan's ethnic groups and historically supported by Pakistan. Other groups include the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara that formed the kernel of the Northern Alliance opposed to the Taliban and supported by India because of its historic enmity with Pakistan. As Russia fears the spread of fundamentalist Islamist movements in Central Asia, it has also always opposed the Taliban. As Iran shares the Persian linguistic bond with the Tajik and a sectarian Shia bond with the Hazara, its policy towards Afghanistan has rested on these two cornerstones and it has allied with India and Russia against the Taliban and their Pakistani backer. Mottaki's visit, therefore, is intended to demonstrate that Iran could rally the ranks of the Northern Alliance again and hamper any US agreement with the Taliban. It is simultaneously indicating that it holds powerful cards in Central Asia, and not just in the Middle East. Until now it appears that Iran has wagered correctly that the Obama administration will have to rely on it to resolve the US's problems in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and that it will be able to leverage this into recognition by the world's sole superpower for a major Iranian role in the region. Tehran has succeeded in imposing a new geopolitical reality through the expansion of its regional influence and its ability to withstand intensive US pressures, whether aimed at its nuclear ambitions or its relations with Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine and various factions in Iraq. Moreover, by deft manoeuvring it managed to manipulate hypothetical gaps and political contradictions between the nations of the region to the advantage of its own national interests and the disadvantage of America's regional projects. Iran has welcomed the Obama overture but it is playing coy in the hope of wringing as much as it can out of Washington before openly committing itself. So far Iranian calculations have proven realistically founded and accurate. However, what could hamper Tehran's ambitions is not current regional balances, which are tilting in its favour, but the intricacies of the decision-making process in Washington. * The writer is director of Al-Sharq Centre for Regional and Strategic Studies.
