Quietly Rooting Against Saddam

...Indeed, the United States has given no indication that it is willing to buy off state sponsors of terrorism...

...He suggested that, rather than revolutionary ideology or aspirations for regional influence, the driving force behind this policy was the elite leadership's concern for self-preservation...

...that the United States' determination to overthrow Saddam is a greed-driven imperial plot to control regional oil deposits and reestablish Anglo-American dominance of the Persian Gulf...

...The variety of women's dress reflects modern sensibilities as well as the religious and ideological commitments of the Islamic Revolution...

...And if Iran attempts to wield such support as a playing card by, say, ratcheting up the violence in southern Lebanon, the country is likely to feel a quick and unpleasant backlash from an American administration determined to repay a "blood debt," in Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's words, to Hezbollah...

...The realism evident in Iranian attitudes toward the invasion of Iraq is matched by fantastical views about the sources of America's Middle East policy and the prospects for U.S.-Iranian relations in the wake of the war...

...Iran's attitude toward the war in Iraq reflects a similar dualism...

...Saddam, he said, should voluntarily open the political system to all communities and factions and hold a referendum on a shift to democracy...

...Iranians hate saddam with a passion, and fear him as well, leading them to view the American war as a way for Iran to get rid of a major headache without having to do the work itself...

...Iran declared early on its attitude of "active neutrality" (a step beyond the country's "passive neutrality" in the 1991 Gulf War...

...But many others push the limits set by the Islamic Republic's "virtue police": a silk scarf knotted under the chin, a knee-length coat over bell-bottom jeans and platform shoes...

...The odd mis-perceptions that seem to shape Iranian thinking—that its troublesome overseas engagements are a source of strength rather than a vulnerability, that the United States is of a mind to make bargains over support for international terrorism, and that the American government, while held hostage to Israeli interests and bent on regional transformation, is nonetheless likely to improve relations with an Iran unwilling to modify its behavior—suggest that the Islamic Republic is likely, as it has in the past, to overplay its hand...

...He admitted that he had not done so, nor did he have any immediate plans to...

...But ironically, and perhaps tragically, the Iranian government seems to see advantages in precisely those issues that give American policymakers the greatest concern...

...Yet the Iranian government also obscures any private glee over Saddam's upcoming demise with regular condemnations of American policy...

...The Islamic Republic is also cooperating with the U.N...

...In reality, this is exactly backwards, for the regime's support of terrorism heightens American hostility and increases the likelihood of confrontation...

...In one restaurant I saw a woman who wore her headscarf so lightly and with such panache over her highlighted tresses that I thought I was looking at Benazir Bhutto, the glamorous former Pakistani prime minister...

...But Iran's political structure, truth be told, is not the feature of the Islamic Republic that ranks it among the Axis of Evil...

...Continued Iranian support for Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, along with the newly exposed Iranian determination to master a full nuclear fuel cycle, are real and troubling issues for the United States, ones with even greater salience since September 11...

...The conflagration in Iraq will undoubtedly shift the regional balance of power in Iran's favor...

...In his analysis, the small group at the top of the Islamic Republic believes that support for Hezbollah can be used as a bargaining chip against direct U.S...

...Iran hosts the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the main Iraqi Shia opposition movement, and has encouraged SCIRI to participate in State Department-sponsored meetings of the Iraqi opposition...

...They seem to think that the outcome of the Iraq war will give them strong cards to play in this regard...

...The Iranians, he noted wryly, love to put forward initiatives that are dead on arrival...

...The meeting, predictably, was dominated by discussion of the coming war in Iraq and its consequences for the region...

...Iran's main worry, judging by the flood of queries I received on the subject, is whether, after the forcible regime change in Baghdad, Tehran is next on the target list...

...The awkward diplomatic initiative apparently resulted from the leader's need to square the obvious Iranian preference for regime change in Baghdad with the necessity of opposing American intervention in yet another next-door neighbor...

...It is noteworthy that Iran, unlike every other Middle Eastern nation, was not wracked by large antiwar demonstrations in the weeks before the fighting...

...A comical example of this head-of-a-pin dance took place at the conference's opening session, when Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi laid out Iran's plan for a diplomatic solution to the standoff...

...The United States would, of course, prefer a fully accountable, pluralistic Iranian government to the existing intolerant theocracy...

...some women favor the full chador and, even indoors, wear long skirts and scarves that fully encircle the head and neck...

...and that the war in Iraq is a plot hatched in Tel Aviv to serve Israel's security interests...

...But any real improvement in relations would require addressing the issues at the core of American concerns: Iran's support for terror groups and its alarming nuclear program...

...But whether that shift is ephemeral or longlasting will depend on how wisely Iran plays its cards...

...One well-connected analyst I spoke to lamented the senior clerical leadership's dogmatic support for Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist groups...

...These otherwise bright and savvy Iranian foreign policy experts, rather, sidestep the problem of Iran's external behavior and the threat it poses to American interests by holding to the same conspiracy theories and ideological preconceptions that dominate Arab opinion of American foreign policy: that it is held hostage to a warmongering coalition of neocon-servatives and southern evangelicals...

...BY TAMARA COFMAN WITTES Tehran ON THE CITY STREETS here, the legal requirement for women to dress with modesty is interpreted with varying degrees of strictness...

...One Iranian scholar noted U.S.-Iranian cooperation in the run-up to the war, and suggested that such tacit cooperation as was witnessed during the Afghanistan campaign, if repeated now, might bear fruit in repaired U.S.-Iranian ties...

...And with respect to these core issues, Iranian thinking becomes almost delusional...

...interference in domestic Iranian politics...

...Frustrated foreign ministry officials later told me that Kharrazi had discarded his staff-prepared text that morning and substituted this odd proposal after several phone conversations with the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei...

...The Iranian analysts and foreign ministry officials I spoke to combined a clear-eyed assessment of the war's dangers and regional impact with a bizarre sense of what drives American policy and how Iran might gain from the upcoming conflict...

...Indeed, at times Iranian officials were at pains to demonstrate that the Islamic Republic did not support a war, notwithstanding the government's behavior...

...The Islamic Republic's leaders are therefore convinced that the United States is out to get them, as well, and they are consequently seeking means of deterrence...

...Last month, I joined about 30 Europeans, Arabs, South Asians, and two other Americans here for a seminar on the Persian Gulf sponsored by the Iranian foreign ministry's think tank...

...As we filed out of the lecture hall, the European diplomat next to me chuckled...

...Judging from my experience, both Iranian civilians and the foreign ministry's career diplomats yearn for rapprochement with the United States...

...One of the first questions asked by the press, naturally, was whether Kharrazi had presented this new initiative to the Iraqi government...

...And Iran's foreign policy elite either cannot or will not face up to America's chief concern: the sponsorship of terrorists avowedly hostile to the United States by a regime that spills bile about America as a "Great Satan," while its centrifuges are busy enriching uranium...

...The views expressed here are her own...

...Iranian analysts clearly hope that the Iraq war might presage a new pragmatism and create possibilities for resolving longstanding U.S.-Iran-ian differences...

...Tamara Cofman Wittes is a Middle East specialist at the United States Institute of Peace...

...When asked at the public conference about the lack of street protests against the war, former diplomat Kazem Sajjadpour replied that Iranians were not inclined to show support for Saddam when Iranian veterans were still dying in hospitals from Iraqi chemical attacks suffered during the 1980-1989 war...

...High Commissioner for Refugees to aid fleeing Iraqis, and has set up new refugee camps along its border...