Iran Ruling on Jailed Jews Chills U.S. Ties

Prospects for rapprochement between the United States and Iran suffered a major setback Thursday when Tehran reneged on a behind-the-scenes diplomatic pledge involving 10 Iranian Jews convicted of spying for Israel, according to U.S. officials and European diplomats.

Although an Iranian appeals court on Thursday reduced the prison sentences of the 10 Jews, its action fell short of what U.S. officials said they had been led to believe would occur.

The fate of the 10 Jews has been monitored by the outside world because it pits the reformist government of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami against his nation’s conservative judiciary on an issue considered critical to the process of improving relations with the West.

“Whatever the reformers’ good intentions, the results of this case show that they simply can’t deliver,” said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity.

On July 1, a lower court sentenced the 10 Jews to prison terms ranging from four to 13 years on three charges: participating in an illegal spy ring, recruiting new agents and cooperating with the government of Israel. The defendants include a shoe salesman, a store clerk, a shopkeeper, a professor, a civil servant and two religion teachers.

U.S. and Israeli officials have vehemently denied that any of the Jews were involved in any form of intelligence-gathering for any government.

On Thursday, the appeals court threw out the first two charges lodged against each defendant, leaving only the charge of cooperating with Israel, and reduced their prison sentences to a range of between two and nine years.

But Clinton administration officials and European diplomats said Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi had promised more in private discussions at the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York earlier this month.

A senior administration official who has been working on the case said U.S. officials were told by a number of diplomats and other sources who spoke with Kharrazi “that these guys were going to get off, or that most of them would be off and the rest would have nominal sentences.”

The U.S. officials who discussed the situation with Iran did not want to be identified to avoid jeopardizing sensitive diplomatic relationships.

Kharrazi was in Los Angeles on Thursday for a speech at UCLA’s James West Center. About 150 people, including supporters of the Iranian opposition, college professors and members of Iranian Jewish groups, gathered outside to protest his appearance.

Kharrazi told the gathering of mostly businesspeople and scholars that he didn’t understand Western criticism of the trial, which he described as just and fair.

“They do not accept the Iranian Jewish trial, which is very arrogant,” he said. “I do not understand why a government from the outside intervenes in the internal affairs of other countries.”

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher expressed disappointment that the appeals court did not overturn all of the convictions.

“We’re also disappointed that the Iranian government has not released any of the 10 defendants from prison,” Boucher said.

Human rights groups and Western governments have claimed that the defendants were denied due process: They were held incommunicado for up to a year and had no access to lawyers for a long period; the trial was not open to the public; there was no jury; and the same person acted as both judge and prosecutor.

The administration now fears that the Senate will vote to reverse the recent order by President Clinton removing sanctions on Iranian carpets, pistachios and caviar. In July, the House passed similar legislation that would rescind the order, which Clinton issued as a gesture to prod the rapprochement launched by Khatami after his election in 1997.

“This offers the impetus for Congress to do something which would effectively set back relations to the lowest point in two decades of hostility,” said the senior administration official working on the case.

U.S. officials also expressed concern about Tehran’s announcement Thursday that it had conducted the first launch of a Shahab-3D medium-range ballistic missile. The new missile, a variation of the Shahab-3, is based on North Korean and Russian technology and has a range of about 800 miles, greater than the distance between Iran and Israel.

U.S. officials said the test proves that Iran continues to develop weapons of mass destruction over the objections of the international community. Washington is not convinced, however, that the Shahab-3D worked properly.

Iran’s Defense Ministry said the new missile was built by the nation’s aerospace authority as part of a nonmilitary satellite launch program.

Like the judiciary, Iran’s military is controlled by conservatives, as is its intelligence service. All three institutions are supervised by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Yet another issue impeding the rapprochement process has been Iran’s assistance in Iraq’s oil-smuggling operations. Iranian Revolutionary Guards have allowed ships illegally carrying Iraqi oil to use Iranian waters, beyond the reach of U.S. and U.N. ships trying to enforce an international blockade.

U.S. intelligence has determined that Iran is currently blocking smugglers, as it did during Khatami’s last U.N. visit, in 1998. But U.S. officials say Iran’s actions over the past two years have been “highly erratic.”

“Iraqi oil smuggling is a big issue for us. Iran has facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal Iraqi oil to help the coffers of Saddam Hussein this year alone,” said a U.S. official who monitors Iraq’s smuggling efforts. “Iran has announced it will seize ships smuggling Iraqi oil. But it’s made that promise before and broken it often.”

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Times staff writer Soraya Nelson in Los Angeles contributed to this report.