Iran Takes Itself Hostage : The limits to rapid normalization of relations with Washington.

Iran wasted no time this week in pressing its claim for an “appropriate” reward for helping to free American hostage Frank H. Reed from more than three years of captivity in Lebanon. The Tehran Times, a mouthpiece for President Hashemi Rafsanjani, boasted that “months of hard effort” had produced a “miraculous” result, then demanded that Washington reciprocate Iran’s favors. President Bush, after politely thanking Iran for its efforts, firmly repeated his earlier insistence that no deals will be made to win the release of the five Americans still held in Lebanon.

Bush’s no-deals policy remains the right one. Iran hasn’t earned any favors. Its Hezbollah fundamentalist clients in Lebanon, who look to Tehran for material aid as well as spiritual and political guidance, have released two kidnap victims. But it strains credulity to think that Iran could not just as easily have ordered their freedom--and that of every other Western hostage--years earlier had it so chosen. Indeed, It becomes increasingly harder to accept that Iran couldn’t have forestalled the kidnapings in the first place.

Hostage-taking, openly endorsed by top Iranian leaders, after all began in 1979 with the seizure of U.S. embassy personnel in Tehran by government-supported Islamic revolutionaries. That action brought to a violent end the long postwar chapter in U.S.-Iran relations that had seen intervention by the CIA to help oust the erratic anti-Western Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953; restoration to the throne of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi from the exile into which he had been forced to flee, and the development of a special relationship between Tehran and Washington. That relationship, which became increasingly intimate as Iran grew rich from soaring oil prices in the 1970s, found America to its misfortune becoming ever more tightly identified in Iranian minds with an increasingly repressive regime. The fall of the shah, the rise to power of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Iran’s bold embrace of terrorism combined to produce a decade of the deepest and most bitter animosities.

Still, two American hostages have been set free within a short time, obviously at Iran’s behest. The question is, why now?

Iran-watchers believe that the so-called moderate faction in Tehran--Rafsanjani and his allies--have finally had to recognize the international harm that Iran’s outlaw behavior has brought it. This doesn’t necessarily imply a basic shift from earlier revolutionary dogmas. What it may point to is acknowledgement that the time for a more pragmatic approach to international relations has come.

The main engine driving a policy shift is an economy that is tottering after a decade of mismanagement and war with Iraq. The last 10 years, according to a report published in Iran, have seen per capita gross national product fall by 50%. Unemployment stands officially at 20%; probably it is higher. Inflation ranges from 60% to 100% a year. Food and other consumer goods are scarce. February saw serious anti-government demonstrations in a number of cities. It was about that time that the Rafsanjani-controlled press began talking about releasing the hostages.

Iran clearly needs foreign help. Specifically, it wants $27 billion in loans, credits and investments to rebuild and reorient its enfeebled economy. Rafsanjani knows that this help won’t be offered until foreigners are satisfied that Iran’s reformers have prevailed over its fundamentalist fanatics.

Setting free the hostages is an obvious way to signal that a new course has been set. The Bush Administration, while rejecting any quid pro quo deals, continues to hold out the prospect of a more normal relationship with Tehran once all hostages are free. That’s been the right policy all along, and it has been given new strength as Iran’s need for outside help becomes steadily more urgent. Western nations should go on making it clear that as long as hostages are held, an insurmountable barrier to improving Iran’s economic relations with the rest of the world will exist. The inexcusable cruelty of hostage-taking won’t quickly be forgotten. But the sooner Iran finally acts to end its shameful investment in human misery, the sooner it can realistically look for the outside help that it so desperately needs.

Iran’s Postwar Leaders: