Iranian Bids for U.S. Talks Told : Washington Rejected 2 Initiatives, 3rd Collapsed, Go-Between Says

Iran has sent at least three envoys since last December to open discussions on establishing a relationship with the United States, but two were rejected by the Americans and the third collapsed, according to an Iranian-American scholar who served as a go-between.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz this week publicly announced his willingness to begin a “direct dialogue” with Iran and said the United States has had a number of “probes” from Iran through third parties.

But, according to the intermediary and other sources in contact with the Iranian regime, several efforts to open talks over the last six months have been thwarted by suspicious U.S. officials or bad timing.

3rd-Party Messages

The highest-level probe has come from a fourth source, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Larijani, according to several sources in touch with the Iranian regime. Larijani, who has not left Iran as part of his initiative, has sent several messages through third parties, including the government of Algeria, seeking secret talks with the United States, the sources said.

But U.S. officials said they are still uncertain of Larijani’s “authenticity”--in the sense that they want to be sure he has the approval of the top levels of his government before any direct contacts begin. They said they have received no reply to their questions about that issue.

In one case, the State Department refused to meet with a well-placed Iranian representative because a background check identified him as an anti-American radical. But the intermediary said that U.S. officials checked the wrong man, mistaking the proposed envoy for his brother.

Another Iranian initiative--attempted just last week in Switzerland--was interrupted when an American warship in the Persian Gulf mistakenly shot down an Iranian jetliner, killing 290 passengers and crew.

State Department officials, mindful of former White House aide Oliver L. North’s abortive negotiations with Iran, have warned Tehran that they could not guarantee that any new U.S.-Iranian meetings will remain confidential--a caveat that conflicts with the Iranians’ demand that the first steps in any new relationship must be secret.

In any case, officials say, Shultz is not overly anxious to get involved in new talks with Iran, despite his expressions of good will. Although he said this week that he is willing to talk without preconditions, Shultz has until now decreed that the United States will deal only with a high-ranking official of the Iranian government.

Two of three proposed emissaries--identified as the personal physician to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and a former Iranian diplomat serving as Khomeini’s confidential envoy--were rejected in part because they did not hold formal positions in Iran’s revolutionary government.

The fruitless effort to establish a dialogue between the United States and Iran has been marked by misunderstandings, missed opportunities and suspicion on the part of American officials badly burned in the Iran-Contra scandal.

In the case of the deputy foreign minister, the Administration has hesitated to open secret contacts with Larijani because officials fear that he may be acting on his own or as an ally of the relatively moderate Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, but not as a representative of the entire Khomeini regime.

Three Other Attempts

Three other attempts have been made by Iran since December to open a dialogue with the United States.

An account of these efforts was provided by the Iranian-American academic who served as intermediary in the talks. He asked that his name and the names of the Iranian representatives not be published. His account was not disputed by State Department officials.

The first contact through the go-between was made Dec. 5, when the physician who treats Khomeini was in the United States visiting his son in the Midwest. He called the scholar and asked to meet him in New York, where he stayed for 24 hours before flying back to Iran.

They met at the TWA terminal at LaGuardia airport, where the physician said he was authorized by Rafsanjani to contact the U.S. government to open a channel of communication between Iran and the United States.

The go-between contacted a State Department official, who said that such a meeting could not be authorized on such short notice. He also said that the U.S. government would not be willing to talk with anyone who is not an official of the Iranian government.

The physician returned to Tehran.

In late December, the Iranian-American intermediary was contacted by a second Iranian, a former Iranian diplomat now serving as a confidential adviser to Khomeini and Rafsanjani. He said that he had an important message to pass to the American government.

The second envoy, described by the go-between as “Rafsanjani’s Kissinger,” holds a doctorate in political science from the Sorbonne in Paris. He speaks French and English.

The adviser had been brought into Khomeini’s inner circle in 1986 in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal to begin planning an eventual overture to the United States. Rafsanjani wanted a channel opened with the United States before Khomeini dies, the adviser asked the intermediary to tell the U.S. government.

The diplomat’s willingness to meet with American officials was relayed to the State Department, which said it could not talk to him until officials had checked his background.

About a week later, the State Department rejected the representative and refused to grant him a visa to come to Washington, saying that he was an anti-American radical who had been expelled from France for anti-Western activities. The middleman said he learned several months later from contacts in the U.S. government that the Americans had confused the man with his brother.

That opportunity last winter was lost, but the envoy returned to Switzerland in late May after finding out that his rejection was a case of mistaken identity, according to the intermediary.

The envoy told the middleman that if anyone from the U.S. government wanted to speak with him, he would be available in Geneva, Paris or the United States, if the Americans would grant him a visa. He repeated, through the intermediary, that he was authorized to speak on behalf of Khomeini, Rafsanjani and the Iranian regime.

The message he wished passed to the United States was this, the intermediary said: “The first thing is to find the areas where we have an immediate common interest. In plain English, that means, What will happen after Khomeini dies?” The rest of the message was confidential, the Iranian representative said.

There was no immediate American response to the envoy’s second overture. U.S. diplomats once again explained to the intermediary that dialogue can only be conducted with formal representatives of the Iranian government. The go-between explained that the emissary is extremely close to Khomeini and Rafsanjani and is clearly authorized to speak for them.

The second overture went nowhere.

Then, two weeks ago, the Khomeini adviser was back in Geneva and made contact with a second intermediary. Traveling with the adviser was the deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in charge of arms purchases and production. He was the highest-ranking Iranian dispatched to try to make contact with the Americans.

The intermediary flew from Los Angeles to Geneva and informed U.S. officials in Switzerland of the presence of the two Iranian officials and their desire for exploratory talks. The military official said that he was available to meet with U.S. officials in early July in Brazil, where he was going on an arms-buying mission.

Before the State Department could respond, however, the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 on Sunday halted the latest Iranian effort.

The go-between said he was unhappy with the Americans’ seeming unwillingness to meet with any of the representatives sent by Iran.

“I’m so upset with the (U.S.) government,” he said. “Why won’t they talk with the person they send? Don’t ask for a letter signed by Khomeini himself; you’re not going to get it.

“The way it stands at this point, the government of Iran is eager to separate the issue of the (airliner) accident from the larger question of dealing with the United States at a critical time, which is the time Khomeini dies and all sorts of unexpected events might unfold in the country,” he said.

In public, Shultz and other American officials have said that they are ready and willing to open talks with Iran’s government. “We’re prepared for an authoritative discussion,” Shultz told reporters on his aircraft en route to Asia on Tuesday.

But in fact, State Department spokesman Phyllis Oakley acknowledged Wednesday, the United States has made no active attempt to open talks with Iran. Instead, the Administration has been waiting for the right Iranian to come along.

The State Department has insisted that any Iranian with whom it talks must establish that he comes with the full authority of the Khomeini regime--a hangover from the Iran-Contra affair of 1986, when former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane visited Tehran only to discover that his talks had not been fully approved by the Iranian authorities.

Perhaps more daunting for any would-be Iranian negotiator, the State Department has insisted that it cannot guarantee the secrecy of any talks.

“We can’t guarantee confidentiality; if someone asks whether we have had talks, we’ll say yes, and we’ll list who the participants were,” a senior State Department official said. “That generally stops them, because they haven’t made a real governmental decision to have talks with us.”

Oakley said the Administration has received several “probes” from Iran through third governments, apparently in addition to the contacts attempted by the Iranian-American scholar who spoke with The Times. She said the State Department has responded with messages asking for further proof of the negotiators’ authenticity but has received no satisfactory response.

“We’ve had a number of probes from Iran, through various third parties, saying that they’d like to talk with us, and we’ve responded to those,” she said. “But the difficulty has been to determine the authority of those probes.”