EDITORIAL ON IRAN

By Ambassador Mark Johnson (ret.)

(The Montana World Affairs Council has been one of the leading councils in the nation maintaining a dialogue with Iran. In March of 2001, The Montana Council hosted Iranian Ambassador to the UN, Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian in Missoula.)

GUEST COLUMN: Keeping a dialogue with Iran essential - Tuesday, May 22, 2007
By MARK JOHNSON for the Missoulian

A few days ago, I had lunch with the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran at his posh Park Avenue residence in Manhattan. I was part of a delegation of board members from the national World Affairs Councils of America, the largest international affairs organization in the U.S. For some time, WACA has maintained an interest in keeping lines of communication open with key Middle Eastern countries on a people-to-people basis.

We were received cordially by Ambassador Mohammed Javad Zarif, who serves as Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Iran's most senior representative in the U.S. (It is interesting that senior officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran appear to live as well as the Shah of Iran's ambassadors once did!).
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While we have much to disagree with, our purpose in meeting was to “hear what the other guy has to say” and continue an effort at dialogue, which has been largely frozen at the official level since the seizure of the American hostages in 1979. Some will recall that the World Affairs Council of Montana hosted Ambassador Zarif's predecessor in Missoula in early 2001.

It is important to note that Iran is not Arab, and indeed has a distinctly different historical and cultural narrative. Iran is heir to the great Persian Empire, the likes of which the world had never seen. And, for 500 years, Iran has been the world's only Shia Islam nation.

Responding to a question about how our two governments could break the stalemate, Ambassador Zarif thought that the U.S. and Iran ought to seek areas where progress could be achieved. “Iraq is too complicated, in the sense there are too many players,” he noted.

It was on the nuclear issue where he thought progress could be obtained. “It's really an issue between the two of us.” If the U.S. were to agree, the Europeans will step aside. The ambassador noted he had advanced an idea calling for a consortium to monitor developments. Referring to Iran's longstanding efforts to develop civilian nuclear energy (which go back to the 1970s), he said any program must be transparent. But he told us these kinds of overtures were a tough sell in Tehran, especially with the Majlis (parliament).

One reason the stakes on this issue are so high is the ripple effect throughout the Arab Sunni world. I was in Cairo when the Egyptian government announced its plans for civilian nuclear power. Jordan has made a similar announcement, and Saudi Arabia is already approaching suppliers.

The nuclear topic was the most productive part of our conversation. Turning to “radical Islam,” support for Hezbollah (an Iranian-backed terrorist organization in Lebanon that was responsible for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut), and the supply of weapons to Iraq, we received standard Iranian denials of any wrongdoing.

It is Washington's rhetoric that inflames the militants of al-Sadr in Iraq, the ambassador stated. If you stop your occupation, the Shia insurgency will stop. Left unsaid was the likely prospect of greater support from Saudi Arabia and others for the Sunni jihadists, something Iran does not want.

Ambassador Zarif is no stranger to the United States. He grew up in San Francisco, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Denver, the same alma mater of current and former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright.

Is there any good served by talking with the Iranians? It depends.

There are three Irans, in fact. The first consists of the people of Iran, who are open and famous for their hospitality, something I witnessed on a visit to Iran in March. We should promote as much contact with them as possible.

Then there is the so-called Islamic Republic government led by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who despite his menacing, apocalyptical rhetoric, does not call the shots. That is done by the malevolent mullahs who rule the theocracy like carpet makers, “making their mischief one knot at a time.” Consider their recent actions: the abduction of 15 British sailors, the unexplained disappearance of a retired FBI agent, and the latest “arrest” of an noted Iranian-American scholar who was seized on the streets of Iran as she was en route to the airport (and has been denied access to a lawyer).

Iran is too important a country in too important a region of the world to ignore. The only country that wanted to be rid of Saddam Hussein more than Washington was Tehran. Both sides now share a common desire, but for different reasons, to halt Iraq's disintegration.

Actually, the key question is not about the talks per se but rather whether the ruling revolutionary clergy are serious about any deal on Iraq, as well as the nuclear issue (which is now being handled in a multinational forum at the U.N. Security Council).

The recent dramatic announcement in both Tehran and Washington May 13 that the U.S. and Iran would engage in direct public bilateral talks will provide us an opportunity to gauge Tehran's seriousness, as well as the Bush administration's professed desire to fashion a real exit strategy.

But as Churchill said, “This is not the end; it is not even the beginning of the end. ... It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” We still have a long way to go.

Ambassador Mark Johnson (ret.) is founder of the Montana World Affairs Council in Missoula, and the national vice chair of the World Affairs Councils of America in Washington, D.C.