Regime Making Overtures to West : More Open Iran Emerges as War Fades

“The Merchant of Venice,” translated into Farsi, opened in Tehran this month--at Vahdat Hall, a theater built during Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s reign in the cool shadows of the Elborz Mountains. Shakespeare was officially returning to Iran.

Recorded in a small item in an Iranian newspaper, the staging of the play was one more sign that the two-month cease-fire that apparently has ended Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq is producing some quiet, if still controversial, accommodations with the West.

And the changes are not only on the surface. Economically as well as culturally, the Islamic republic has embarked on a tentative liberalization. After years when the merchant class labored under the constraints of a wartime economy and the lot of most ordinary Iranians grew worse, the government in Tehran is providing new latitude for its private sector and making new approaches to the outside world.

In particular, Iran, regarded by many Americans as the quintessence of evil ever since Muslim radicals held 52 Americans hostage in the U.S. Embassy from 1979 to 1981, is beginning to make overtures to the United States. Since the Iran-Iraq cease-fire, Reagan Administration officials report an increase in the number of messages relayed from Tehran through third parties on a host of subjects, with the initiative increasingly from Iran.

“There are lots of signals,” said a White House official who asked not to be named. “The ether is full of them.”

No one is predicting an abrupt return to normal relations. In the volatile climate of Tehran, a resurgence of the old hostility remains possible.

For the present, however, U.S. and other Western analysts see encouraging signs for the first time since the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini replaced the shah in 1979. Indeed, some predict that the result could be the release of the nine American hostages in Lebanon by the time the next U.S. President is inaugurated Jan. 20.

On both sides, the need for detente is mounting. The basis for improved relations appears to be a variation on an old theme--arms and hostages--but the stakes are higher for both sides.

President Reagan, having used the hostage issue in his 1980 election campaign against Jimmy Carter, feels pressure to improve his own record on terrorism, according to Administration sources. The nine hostages still in Lebanon are among 57 who have been held at one time or another since 1982 by pro-Iranian Shia Muslim militants--more than the 52 whose captivity plagued Carter’s presidency. At least two hostages in Beirut have now been held more than twice as long as the embassy hostages’ 444 days.

For its part, Iran feels militarily vulnerable after the series of battlefield defeats that forced it to accept the U.N.-sponsored truce with Iraq, so a top priority is gaining access to U.S. arms. Iranian officials have made clear that they want the weapons that the shah purchased from the United States but did not collect before he abdicated.

And, U.S. military analysts say, Iran now also needs massive quantities of new tanks, aircraft and artillery to fend off any future threat.

‘Ice Is Breaking’

“The ice is already breaking,” said a State Department official. “The gist (of the signals from Iran) is upbeat. The line seems to be that it’s up to the U.S. to help Iran out of the mess it’s in.”

Iranian officials are not united on the new direction. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi told an Iranian paper: “The resumption of relations with Washington is a betrayal of the ideals of the revolution and of those who have made sacrifices and have been guarding it. The Western media’s guesses about Iran-U.S. rapprochement are nothing but illusions.”

The next week, however, Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Larijani said: “Our reluctance to talk with Washington does not imply fear. We do not regard any talks to be disagreeable per se. If they change their policies and treat us with mutual respect and agree to nonintervention in our affairs, relations with the U.S. will be like those with other countries.”

Dubious Emissaries

As for the United States, the White House official repeated the official position that the Administration is prepared to deal with an authoritative Iranian figure, not with the dubious emissaries who have made overtures in the past. The Administration has rejected suggestions by mid-level State Department officials that it reconsider the U.S. embargo of arms to Iran and the boycott of most Iranian goods.

“But eventually something will happen,” the White House official said. “Sooner or later, Iranians will realize their future is with the West.”

Another Administration source added that “there are lots of hints that Iran is working on the hostage issue,” Washington’s prerequisite for a long-term thaw. Earlier this month, Iran engineered the release of West German hostage Rudolf Cordes.

Other officials here have predicted the possible release of one or two American hostages before the November presidential election, partly as a sign of good faith and possibly even to boost Vice President George Bush’s candidacy.

Fear of Dukakis

Diplomats in Tehran have reported the governing mullahs’ general fear of Democratic candidate Gov. Michael S. Dukakis because he has favored moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and because his wife is Jewish.

Iran is also seeking to normalize relations with other Western nations. British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe plans to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati at the United Nations this week, and British officials said they will discuss the possibility of increasing diplomatic ties.

Economically, Iran already seems to be increasing its contacts with the West. And the West is responding. Thirty-six countries, including Britain, France and West Germany, participated in Iran’s annual international trade fair in Tehran this month.

“We have bitter experiences with foreign investments in our country,” Iranian President Ali Khamenei said at the opening ceremonies. “But these experiences will not be an obstacle for those countries wishing to establish healthy ties and trade. We accept the world’s knowledge and technology as a standard and an inseparable part of foreign trade.”

Now that the costly war with Iraq is over, the Islamic republic appears to be launching its own version of perestroika , Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s effort to restructure his nation’s economy.

Reform, Reconstruction

“Iran at this point is very much like the Soviet Union, in the sense that Iran also has to subordinate its international relations to the twin imperatives of reform and reconstruction, needs which are going to dominate events in Iran for some time,” explained University of Virginia political scientist R. K. Ramazani.

Iran estimates that it will have to spend at least $300 billion to repair the damage caused by the war before it can even begin working on long-awaited development projects or resupplying its shattered military.

As the cease-fire removes the most obvious explanation for continuing economic hardship at home, the theocracy is also going to be under growing pressure to meet heightened expectations, according to U.S. economists and analysts. Unemployment and housing shortages for Iran’s burgeoning population of 52 million became acute during the war.

At the same time, the middle- and upper-class bazaaris, or merchant class, will want the constraints of a wartime economy removed so that their businesses, mainstays of the Iranian economy for centuries, can flourish again.

Failure at War

And the mullahs need a success to counter disillusionment over Iran’s failure at war. In many ways, the revolution’s ability to survive may now depend on its treatment of the postwar economy.

Although Iranian leaders claim that they will never again become beholden to another country the way the shah had grown dependent on the United States, they also reportedly recognize that the Islamic republic is not economically healthy enough to go it alone, even with its vast oil wealth.

“To generate income to meet the expectations of reconstruction, it is going to be difficult for Iran to rely only on oil income,” said a leading American economist specializing in Iran.

Despite the strong internal opposition to borrowing, a sign of the new times may be Japan’s recent $400-million loan to Iran. And in a key religious ruling this month, Khomeini said that the private sector should be allowed a share of the import and export business, although he said that government should retain its role of preventing hoarding and profiteering.

Internal Resistance

Yet Iran’s version of perestroika is facing some stiff internal resistance. Two clashing visions of the postwar era divide the mullahs, according to the American economist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“One conception is that the state should guide economic development and that state intervention is the best way to achieve social justice and to end dependence on outsiders,” he said. “The other concept emphasizes the sanctity of private property and feels that allowing the private sector to operate with as few constraints as possible is the best way to achieve rapid growth.”

Even before the Islamic republic settles on how it will deal economically with the rest of the world, it is loosening its notoriously severe strictures on life styles at home.

Even Khomeini has been involved. In a recent religious ruling, he allowed Iranians once again to play chess, which had been banned for almost a decade because the game’s pieces are associated with monarchy.

‘Open Up Society’

“There’s clearly a relaxation following the end of the war, and the government has taken a decision to open up both the economy and society a bit more now,” said Shaul Bakhash, a historian at Virginia’s George Mason University. “The government feels it must provide some outlets for the public now that the war is over. It appears that restrictions on women’s dress are a bit more lax. And the Revolutionary Guards are not so visible.”

Beethoven and Mozart have also returned to Tehran, in a seeming reversal of the ayatollah’s admonition that Western music “dulls the mind because it involves pleasure and ecstasy, similar to drugs.”

Not all segments of Iranian society welcome the change. In an eloquent poem--entitled “For Whom Do the Violin Bows Move?”--one of Iran’s most conservative papers recently suggested that the Beethoven and Mozart concerts catered more to “the worm of monarchical culture,” specifically women with “pushed-back scarfs” and men with “protruding bellies” who had grown fat off the black market, than to the poor or to the martyrs of the war.

At a press conference, Iran’s supervisor of revolutionary songs and tunes countered that the decision to let Tehran’s symphony orchestra play the European classics was “a serene policy in the direction of recruiting music fans.”

Expand Support

The Beethoven case, U.S. analysts suggested, reflected the theocracy’s new attempt to expand the revolution’s support, particularly within the middle and upper classes.

“What is happening in Iran conforms with the pattern of other revolutions,” political scientist Ramazani said. “All revolutions go through their temper tantrums, and Iran has not been an exception. Yet all revolutions also must reconcile their ideals with realities.”

The relaxation, however, does not extend to political dissent. Amnesty International reported last month that Iran had begun “a new wave of political executions” numbering 30 government opponents so far, with another 55 dissidents awaiting death.

During the transition to peace, George Mason University’s Bakhash said, the message from the mullahs is that “social restrictions may ease but the political system is not going to change or relax.”

Yet hard-liners within the regime are under growing pressure. During a vote of confidence this month, Iran’s Majlis, or Parliament, ejected from the Cabinet three militants, including Mohsen Rafiqdost, minister of the Revolutionary Guards and a leading figure in the export of Iran’s revolution.

Linked to Bombings

One of those who narrowly retained his job was Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, who as ambassador to Syria from 1982 to 1985 was linked by Western intelligence agencies with suicide bombings against American and Israeli targets in Lebanon.

Several ministers associated with pragmatic positions on economic reform or foreign policy received generous backing. Foreign Minister Velayati, a former pediatrician who has orchestrated Iran’s opening to the West, received the highest number of votes.

The Islamic republic has not, however, gone entirely soft.

At the same time that Beethoven and Mozart concerts were organized in Tehran, the Islamic Guidance Ministry announced “The First Festival of Songs of Deliverance from Infidels.” The hymn memorial was planned, according to the supervisor of revolutionary songs and tunes, “for the sake of shunning the enemies of God and to renew the pledge of allegiance with the martyrs of God’s house.”