U.S. Bent on Keeping Iran Ties in Deep-Freeze : Diplomacy: Islamic republic’s role in hostage releases has failed to win over the Bush Administration. Some link Tehran to continued terrorism.

Despite growing evidence that Iran is pushing for an early end to the Lebanon hostage crisis and attempting to ease its international isolation, the Bush Administration is resisting suggestions--some from within its own ranks--that it should move to improve relations with the Islamic republic.

For now, the Administration has concluded it should maintain its deep-freeze policy toward Iran, even if all Western hostages are released soon, a senior Administration official said. He said that a chief obstacle to a Washington-Tehran rapprochement is Iran’s continued support of international terrorism.

Moreover, the official added, the Administration is not at all sure that Iran’s scramble to improve its relationship with the industrialized nations of the West includes the United States.

Instead, the Muslim clerics who control the Iranian government seem to believe they can do business with Western Europe, Japan and, perhaps, such countries as South Korea, while maintaining their hostility toward Washington.

Speculation that Washington was considering some sort of reciprocal gesture of goodwill toward Tehran was touched off this week when White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater pointedly thanked the government of Iran for its assistance in obtaining the release of hostages Thomas M. Sutherland and Terry Waite.

While the senior official acknowledged that the Administration has begun an internal debate over Iran policy, he said there is little inclination to change. “There are many people who feel ‘Gosh, there’s got to be some way to break this impasse,’ ” the official said. “All of us are frustrated by a situation that doesn’t seem to lend itself to early progress.”

But some non-government experts think change is possible. They say Iran seems to have concluded that it can no longer play the United States and the Soviet Union against each other and, therefore, has little choice but to thaw its long-frozen relationship with Washington.

“The Iranians are quite eager for some sort of rapprochement,” said Shireen T. Hunter, a former Iranian diplomat. “There is no complete agreement in the Iranian leadership, even among the moderate elements, on the extent to which it is necessary to have better relations with the United States.

“But without improving relations with the United States, there will always be limits on how far they can go with the Europeans,” Hunter added. “At least for the foreseeable future, the United States has the dominant position in the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf. The Iranians will have to come to terms with that.”

Hunter, now deputy director of Middle East studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the Administration’s resistance to any sort of U.S. initiative to improve the relationship is counterproductive.

“Not to give them even a small benefit of the doubt or a small encouragement is not very positive,” she said. “The United States could make clear to Western Europe and Japan that we don’t have any objection to closer relations with Iran.”

The senior official said that even if Washington decided to move--which it has not--Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani would come under severe domestic political pressure to rebuff any American overture.

“It goes without saying that release of all the hostages will be a major step toward improving relations,” the official said. “But it isn’t that we could just roll out the red carpet, even if the Iranians could overcome their political constraints.”

U.S. intelligence reports indicate that the Iranian government continues to sponsor terrorist activity. The official said there is no doubt that Iranian agents planned and carried out the assassination in Paris last August of former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar.

Moreover, Iran sponsored a conference last month in Tehran of organizations--many of them terrorist groups--opposed to the U.S.-backed Middle East peace conference in Madrid.

Even if all hostages are freed, the official said, Iran will not be removed from the State Department’s list of states that support terrorism. Under U.S. law, there are strict limits on the relationship with countries on the list. But there has been a definite warming in Washington’s relationship with Syria, even though the Damascus regime continues to be listed.

“What we have with Syria, and what ultimately would be desirable with Iran, is a candid dialogue that offers some hope of addressing the problems,” the official said.

In the days since Sutherland and Waite were released, there have been two developments in U.S.-Iran relations--one pointing toward improvement, the other toward greater alienation.

The United States tentatively agreed to pay Iran $275 million in compensation for Iranian-owned weapons impounded in the United States in 1979 after Islamic revolutionaries overthrew the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. But the same day, Assistant Secretary of State Edward P. Djerejian accused Iran of pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program. He said that Washington is calling for an embargo on nuclear cooperation with Iran.

The financial settlement is part of billions of dollars in disputed claims under adjudication by a tribunal meeting in The Hague. Negotiations in the Dutch capital are the only direct contact between the U.S. and Iranian governments.