Business and Cultural Ties Warm U.S.-Iran Relations

After a recent television news broadcast on the state-run Voice and Vision of Iran, the unmistakable voice of Frank Sinatra began crooning “Strangers in the Night.”

Videotapes now available on Tehran’s bootleg home circuit range from “I’ll Take Manhattan” to “The Silence of the Lambs”; the Revolutionary Guards are said to favor “Top Gun” and the “Rambo” series. At select bookstores, Time and Newsweek offer an alternative to Iran’s Islamic press.

More than 13 years after Islamic revolutionaries toppled Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi from power and castigated the United States as “the great Satan,” America--and things American--are making a comeback in Iran. Indeed, the overwhelming defeat of Iranian hard-liners in this month’s parliamentary elections led one beaming young Iranian woman to boast, “Now the United States can come help us again.”

That sentiment, while widely held here, appears overly optimistic. The regime of President Hashemi Rafsanjani is instead expected to move cautiously before normalizing relations with the United States.

“Rafsanjani wants it and feels it will be necessary, but he must move slowly. It will be a step-by-step normalization, with full relations coming only after time,” explained one Western envoy in Iran.

Even so, the American cultural invasion evident on the TV screens and magazine racks of Tehran is but one indication that an embryonic new relationship between the two countries is gradually taking shape.

The United States is now Iran’s sixth-largest trading partner. U.S. exports--ranging from agricultural equipment to birth-control devices--more than tripled to $527 million last year from $166.5 million in 1990, according to State Department figures.

The total is still a far cry from the $26 billion in American goods that flowed into Iran annually at the height of the shah’s reign. But the rising level of commerce led one Iranian analyst to concede, “There’s already movement, and I expect there’ll be more.”

Iran’s exports to the United States--all oil--jumped from $7 million in 1990 to $265 million last year. But under the terms of the U.S. sanctions still in effect, all sales still must be approved by the Bush Administration. The proceeds go into an account to settle disputes dating to the freezing of Iranian assets after the seizure of the U.S. Embassy here in November, 1979.

Indeed, the immediate future of U.S.-Iran relations will be largely determined by the extent to which Iran needs American assistance to rebuild petroleum facilities damaged during the long Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s and to undertake new exploration and development. Since oil sales account for 90% of Iran’s hard-currency revenues, improving petroleum production capability is considered critical to keeping the revolution intact and accomplishing Rafsanjani’s top priority: nationwide reconstruction.

Iran reportedly is exceeding its production quota of 3.2 million barrels per day under the current guidelines of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. But because of war damage, old equipment, poor maintenance and mismanagement, its total production capability is only about half of the 6 million barrels that were pumped daily during the monarchy, according to specialists here.

“Iran needs the United States for oil production, which is the key to future development,” a European envoy said. “It needs both equipment and know-how on which the Americans have a monopoly.”

Western diplomats here say that as many as 200 Americans have quietly come to Iran recently to work on oil facilities in the southern part of the country and on offshore platforms in the Persian Gulf. State Department officials say they are aware of two Iranian contracts with Western firms to repair offshore facilities. But they could not confirm the presence of American workers because travel to Iran is not illegal and does not require passport validation.

Iranian analysts counter that Tehran can acquire sufficient oil technology and expertise from Canadian and European firms to deal with its current needs.

Even if Iran is able to restore its oil production capabilities without American help, the gradual increase in trade between the two nations may provide the pretext that both sides need to begin breaking down the barriers of hostility and suspicion.

At a time when Tehran wants Western technology and U.S. firms need foreign trade, Iranian analysts concede that commercial ties are likely to be forerunners of diplomatic ties.

Even so, few predict that relations will ever return to their pre-1979 status. In fact, senior Iranian officials contend that Tehran may no longer need the United States, which was the dominant influence and economic partner in Iran for four decades before the revolution.

“There’s always been an assumption that the United States would someday come back,” said a Tehran political scientist. “I’m not sure that’s valid anymore.”

Tehran has turned increasingly to Russia and Eastern Europe to re-equip its ravaged and outdated armed forces, which with U.S. help in the 1960s and 1970s were the sixth-largest in the world. Recent purchases from Russia include sophisticated MIG-29 warplanes and submarines.

Similarly, Tehran is tapping Europe to obtain financial credits to help it rebuild after its eight-year war with Iraq, and major construction contracts are going to such Asian countries as South Korea.

“America is just a country to us. Anyone who thinks having relations with America will solve our problems overnight is making a mistake,” said a senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official.

“And,” he added pointedly, “anyone in America who thinks that establishing relations with Iran will solve all the problems in the Middle East is also making a mistake.”

U.S. officials confirm that Iran remains wary of U.S. overtures. “We’ve let it be known that we’re willing to engage, to talk unconditionally. The offer has been out there for almost two years, but we’ve never had any serious bites,” a senior U.S. official said.

And despite the widespread public belief here that normalized relations are just around the corner, Rafsanjani clearly is in no hurry to act. Since he was elected president in 1989, the Iranian leader has already taken the first important steps. He is widely believed to have been the point man in squeezing Lebanon’s Shiite Muslim extremists to release the last American hostages in December.

Rafsanjani also crafted Iran’s neutral strategy during Operation Desert Storm, restraining hard-liners angered by the U.S. military presence in the Gulf and, afterward, sympathizers advocating full Iranian support for the Shiite uprising in Iraq.

And he orchestrated the parliamentary election process in such a way that three incumbents involved in the 1979-1981 occupation of the U.S. Embassy were barred from running again.

In his first public comment on foreign relations since the election, Rafsanjani made it clear that he wants to strengthen ties with the West. “We extend a hand of cooperation to those who want to have relations with us on a human and equal basis,” he said in a prayer sermon delivered Friday.

But Rafsanjani has to tread carefully.

With the majority of Iran’s population younger than 20, most do not remember the heyday of U.S.-Iran relations. Nor, with Iran’s isolation, have they had contact with Americans. “They know only the rhetoric of the revolution, and a lot of them believe it,” commented an older, American-educated Iranian.

Even among those who once had links with the United States and are unhappy with the fruits of the revolution, there is little nostalgia for a return to the old status quo. “If there’s one thing that (the Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini did do for us, it was to give us our independence,” said an Iranian businessman educated in the Midwest. “We won’t surrender it again easily.”

In his previous position as Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Rafsanjani was widely acknowledged as the chief conduit for the 1986 U.S. arms-for-hostage swap, which proved to be as embarrassing for Tehran as it did for Washington.

Even before this month’s election, Iranian hard-liners charged that he was selling out the revolution to “American Islam.” During Khomeini’s reign, that charge was, literally, anathema.

“It’s not like (President Richard) Nixon going to China. A lot of Iranians believe Rafsanjani has long harbored pro-American sentiments,” said a leading U.S. expert on Iran. The president’s situation is not helped by the facts that his brother, who is head of Iranian television, was educated at the University of California at Berkeley and that his sons were educated in Europe.

In the final years of his life, Khomeini did not rule out relations with the United States. He specifically barred ties only with South Africa and Israel--a pronouncement that is likely to be recited if, and when, Iran decides to normalize relations with America.

Khomeini’s death in June, 1989, also preceded a series of momentous global changes that marked the demise of ideologies ranging from communism to apartheid--another factor that already is being mentioned in discussions of possible U.S. ties.

Indeed, in a sign of the changing times, Mohammed Javad Larajani, a former deputy foreign minister who was elected to Parliament this month, disclosed during the campaign that Iran recently sent officials and bankers to South Africa. The mission focused on Iranian assets in South Africa and the country’s Muslim population, he said.

Yet Rafsanjani may have to wait until after Iran’s 1994 presidential election--and the safety of a second term--to make a move that would symbolically challenge so much of what the revolution was about, according to U.S. and European experts on Iran.

Meantime, both sides have major issues they want addressed.

Iran’s human rights abuses and continued support for extremist groups--symbolized by Khomeini’s “death sentence” against author Salman Rushdie and last year’s assassination of former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar in Paris--are major obstacles for the United States.

“The mullahs are trying to portray themselves as good guys now. Yet they continue to train and support terrorist groups in Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere. And every year, two or three Iranian dissidents abroad continue to die under mysterious circumstances. They can’t have it both ways,” said a Bush Administration official.