British Official Visits Khatami to Solicit Support

After two decades of troubled relations between their nations, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw held a groundbreaking meeting in Tehran with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami on Tuesday in an effort to enlist the Islamic government in the U.S.-led war against terrorism.

The trip to the Iranian capital--the first by a British foreign minister since the 1979 Islamic Revolution--signaled shifting political alliances after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon. But the fire it drew from conservatives in both Britain and Iran illustrated how unsettling any political shift in the Middle East can be.

Straw sought to reassure the Iranian leadership that the campaign against Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan is not a war against Muslims. After the meeting, Straw said he would give Iran evidence of Bin Laden’s involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Iranian political and religious leadership has strongly condemned the attacks, and Khatami sent President Bush condolences for the nearly 6,700 people confirmed dead or missing. But after the meeting with Straw, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi cautioned against quick military reprisals that could threaten civilian lives.

“A rash, hasty action will lead in the long run to insoluble problems,” Kharrazi said. “We must avoid ways that cause catastrophe.”

British officials would not specify what kind of assistance they sought from Iran. Details of the talks were not made public by either government.

“Iran is an important source of advice on Afghanistan,” Straw told reporters in Tehran. “We discussed the approach needed to deal with terrorism and the need to reduce the environment in which terrorists operate.”

Afghanistan has sheltered Bin Laden and his organization since 1996 and has refused U.S. demands that it turn him over.

A British Foreign Office official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said, “We were not there asking for concrete military action.” As for Iranian intelligence, he said, “that’s another matter.”

Iran’s Shiite Muslim leadership opposes the Sunni fundamentalism of Afghanistan’s Islamic Taliban regime, and the two countries nearly went to war in 1998 after at least nine Iranians, most of them diplomats, were slain in northern Afghanistan. Iran already bears the burden of 2 million Afghan refugees who have fled drought and war at home.

But the Iranian government has said that a battle against terrorism should be led by the United Nations. The Islamic government is unlikely to give public support to any U.S.-led war against another Muslim country--particularly not to a war that could result in the long-term deployment of U.S. troops in Iran’s backyard.

Officials in Tehran still resent U.S. and British support for Iraq’s attack on Iran in 1980, which launched the eight-year war in which tens of thousands of troops died. Iranian conservatives also view the U.S. government as a “terrorist” for its support of Israel in that country’s conflict with the Palestinians.

Still, the United States and Britain hope that Iran will not publicly condemn a military campaign in Afghanistan, in the same way it held back during the 1991 Persian Gulf War against Iraq.

In that sense, the pictures of Straw and Khatami--smiling on either side of a floral arrangement--already telegraphs a measure of Iranian tolerance, if not tacit approval for the undertaking in Afghanistan.

The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 over the 1979 occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and has communicated ever since through third parties.

The Bush administration still classifies Iran as a state that supports terrorism for backing extremist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which send suicide bombers into Israel, and the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

Britain, however, resumed full diplomatic relations with Tehran in 1999 after the Iranian government officially distanced itself from the religious death sentence against author Salman Rushdie. Last year, Foreign Minister Kharrazi was the first top member of the Tehran government to visit Britain since the revolution.

Straw had planned to visit Tehran ahead of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan in November to strengthen ties and trade relations, valued at about $450 million last year. The trip was moved up after the attacks.

Conservatives in Iran, who are suspicious of Khatami’s program of opening up to the West, have attacked Straw as Washington’s messenger boy.

“The British cannot be trusted,” a headline in the hard-line Jomhori Islami newspaper said this week. “The British can never be in the same united front as us against terrorism.”

Britain’s conservative Daily Telegraph replied that Iran is the one not to be trusted.

“In a crisis, your enemy’s enemy becomes your friend,” the paper wrote in an editorial. “But it is doubtful whether the foreign secretary’s interlocutors . . . will be willing to grant what he wants: the sharing of intelligence on a common enemy, the Taliban, and permission for overflights. In its eagerness for rapprochement with Tehran, the government risks appearing dangerously naive.”

The British government acknowledged that Straw’s visit upset conservatives in Iran and Israel.

“It is important to look at the wider picture--the need to build a consensus throughout the region in the wake of the terrorist atrocities in the United States,” Straw said.

He denied that he was carrying a message to Tehran from the U.S., although Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he would be interested to hear what the Iranians had to say to Straw.

Middle East experts say the rapprochement between Britain and Iran is unlikely to lead to a similar thaw in U.S.-Iranian relations unless there is a settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Where the two sides might work together, analysts say, is in identifying and supporting a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan.