"Because Iran is anti- Taliban, and could become more cooperative, I would guess..... "
I think this will provide most of the story.....You guys may have seen it but I haven't gone back very far in your discussion.
nytimes.com
TEHRAN
Iran Said to Agree to Help U.S.
With Rescues
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and NEIL A. LEWIS
ASHINGTON, Oct. 15 —
In an important sign of
growing cooperation with the
United States in its war against
Afghanistan, Iran has sent a secret
message to the Bush
administration agreeing to rescue
any American military personnel
in distress in its territory,
American and Iranian officials
said today.
The Iranian message was sent on
Oct. 8, just hours after the United
States launched its first military
strikes against Afghan targets, the
officials said. It was a response
to a confidential message from
the Bush administration the day
before assuring Iran that the
United States would respect its
territorial integrity, including its
airspace.
The messages, delivered through
the Swiss government, reflect
what appears to be a significant
shift in Iranian-American
relations since the Sept. 11
attacks on the United States. The
Bush administration has set aside
for now its criticism of Iran for
supporting Hezbollah, a Shiite
Muslim militant group based in
Lebanon, and the Palestinian
group Hamas. It did not include
either group on two lists of terrorist groups and
individuals whose assets have been frozen because of the
attacks.
In its message, the Bush administration requested that Iran
go to the aid of any American who might be shot down or
forced to land in Iranian territory, or who escaped into
Iran, the officials said.
The Swiss government officially represents United
States-Iranian interests in the absence of diplomatic
relations between the two countries.
The Iranian and American messages are the latest and
most important of several to pass between the two
countries through the Swiss channel in the wake of the
Sept. 11 attacks and could have political ramifications
extending far beyond the fate of American military
personnel.
But the diplomatic maneuvering is extremely delicate. Iran
is still listed by the State Department as the world's most
active state supporter of terrorism, largely because of its
support for Hezbollah and for the Palestinian groups
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The assets of those
groups are frozen under previous executive orders that
appear to be less sweeping than the two most recent
orders.
Nevertheless, the signs of movement are notable. The
administration has, for the first time, asked a federal judge
to throw out a lawsuit brought against Iran by the 52
Americans who were held hostage for 444 days beginning
in 1979 and many of their relatives, who are seeking
damages from the Tehran government.
The litigation was brought last year. Because Iran did not
contest the suit, saying it did not accept that United States
courts had jurisdiction, the hostages and their relatives
won the case by default in August.
But representatives of the Justice Department and the State
Department appeared in court today just as the case was to
go to trial to determine how much Iran owed in damages
to the 137 people who brought the lawsuit.
Asked by the judge why it had taken so long for the
government to intervene, James J. Gilligan, a Justice
Department lawyer, said his agency had not learned of the
lawsuit from the State Department until last month. But
William Coffield, one of the lawyers representing the
former hostages and their relatives, said in an interview
that it appeared that the administration was trying to send
a friendly signal to Iran. "They're clearly carrying water
for Iran," he said.
In recent weeks Iran and the United States have engaged in
what one senior administration official calls a ballet, in
which both sides are taking tentative steps to explore
where their national security interests intersect, in this
crisis and beyond.
Weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration
opened a full-scale interagency review of American
policy toward Iran. The State Department, with its policy
planning director, Richard N. Haass, taking the lead, has
tried to accelerate the review since the attacks,
administration officials said.
Among the issues under discussion are how much Iran
needs to build its conventional defensive military strength
and whether American economic sanctions against Iran
should be sustained, administration officials said. There is
a growing consensus in the administration that the Clinton
administration policy of "dual containment," which
isolated and punished both Iran and Iraq, was unwise and
that the United States could no longer have both as
enemies.
"How did it happen that we are on the opposite side of
both Iran and Iraq?" Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld asked a journalist at a black-tie dinner three
days before the attacks. "It makes no sense."
In a related diplomatic development, American and
Iranian officials met face to face on Oct. 7 in an obscure
United Nations-sponsored forum in Geneva for the second
time since the Sept. 11 attacks to discuss the shape of a
future Afghan government, American and Iranian officials
said. They added that the talks had focused on ways to
broaden the base of the future Afghan government.
The United States, through the United Nations World Food
Program, is shipping food aid overland from Iran to
Afghanistan. A first consignment of 110 tons of wheat was
delivered to Herat, Afghanistan, without difficulty on
Wednesday.
In a briefing last week, Andrew Natsios, the head of the
United States Agency for International Development,
called Iran's cooperation on the relief front excellent.
He said Iran was making possible the relocation of a
number of private relief organizations into Iran from the
Pakistan border area. Iran already has about 1.5 million
Afghan refugees on its territory, Mr. Natsios said, and
does not want "large-scale population movements and
millions of refugees."
Iran's offer to help American military personnel is a signal
that Iran does not intend to use the United States military
campaign against terrorism as a pretext to target American
interests in the region, officials from both countries said.
In its war in Afghanistan, the United States needs at least
the tacit support of Iran, which shares a 560- mile border
with Afghanistan and supplies weapons and logistical and
financial support to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.
Iran's stance is reminiscent of the situation after the Iraqi
occupation of Kuwait in 1990, when Iran refrained from
meddling with the United States-led coalition to expel
Iraq. In the Persian Gulf war of 1991, Iran turned a blind
eye to the Pentagon's violation of airspace along its
western border with Iraq, the best route for American
warplanes to fire missiles over Baghdad. During that
conflict Iran also gave the United States a secret assurance
that it would go to the aid of Americans in combat against
Iraq.
But Iran for years has refused to open a broad, official
political dialogue with the United States, and a number of
different voices are coming from Iran's leadership.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
condemned the military strikes on Afghanistan last week
and accused Washington of lying about its true intentions.
Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, has called for an
immediate end to the military strikes, saying they were
causing a "human catastrophe."
But Mohsen Rezai, the former head of Iran's
Revolutionary Guard who now serves as the secretary of
the powerful Expediency Council, said Iran was willing to
set aside its concerns about the American attacks on
Afghanistan and work with the United States in its war on
terrorism, perhaps including the sharing of intelligence,
The Financial Times reported today. "If the Americans get
trapped in the swamp of Afghanistan, they will definitely
need Iran," Mr. Rezai said in an interview with the
newspaper.
While one European intelligence service has reported that
Iran may be ready to reduce its support for Hezbollah and
Hamas, a senior European official said, American
officials say there is no evidence to support that assertion |
