MAVERICK MOHSEN REZA’I SAYS IRAN CAN WORK WITH AMERICA
LONDON 15 Oct. (IPS) An Iranian official has indicated that Tehran might be willing to set aside its reservations about the US attacks on Afghanistan and work with Washington in its campaign against terrorism, the influential "Financial Times" of London said Monday.
"Iran could share intelligence (with the United States)) provided the fight against terrorism was led by the United Nations" Mr. Mohsen Reza’i, a former Commander-In-Chief of the Islamic revolution guards told the paper’s correspondent in Tehran, Guy Dinmore, repeating the Iranian official line in relation with the ongoing fight against terrorism led by the United States.
"If the Americans get trapped in the swamp of Afghanistan, they will definitely need Iran", he asserted, without explaining why the Americans would need Iran and not Pakistan, for instance?
Elaborating on how Iran could help the US out of a possible Vietnamese-style Afghan "swamp", Mr. Reza’i said this depend on US behaviour, but that Iran could help establish security in the power vacuum left in Central Asia by the collapse of the Soviet Union!
According to Financial Times, Mr. Reza’i’s comments are the "clearest suggestion" yet that Iran is willing to use an opportunity created by the September 11 attacks on the US to erase more than 20 years of tension between the two countries since the Iranian revolution.
Serving as the Secretary of the powerful Assembly of Discerning the Interests of the State (ADIS) which arbitrates in disputes between the institutions of the Islamic regime, Mr. Reza’i, who is dubbed by Iranians as "His Master’s Voice",-- the Master being Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the ADIS Chairman--, is known for his inconsistent, at times bombshell-like statements that he changes with the first remarks from his superiors.
During the last presidential elections, he launched a blistering attack on Mr. Mohammad Khatami, describing him as "unfit" for governing, but then he apologised, saying the outgoing president was his best friend.
But since the "thrust" of his interview was that Washington should end his policy of containment of Iran, allowing it to play a role in the regional security, observers said he was "parroting" the former president, the US’s main interlocutor in Tehran.
The government in Tehran is divided "vertically" over what line to take with Washington about the ongoing bombing of neighbouring Afghanistan, with one side suggesting the country should benefit from the occasion to improve relations with the United States and the other adamantly opposed to any collaboration.
Iranian and US officials are expected to meet during intensified discussions on Afghanistan's future this week at the United Nations.
Iran had condemned the 11 September suicide operations in new York and in Washington and expressed sympathy to the American people and the families of the victims, but then the regime’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i ruled out any co-operation with Washington in its fight against terrorism and in one of his strongest attack on the Americans, he accused the US of "hegemony".
Mr Reza’i is the most senior figure in the Iranian establishment to state explicitly that Iran and the US have common interests and could work together in solving the Afghan crisis. "In fact, Iran is the solution to this crisis. Although the US is dissatisfied with Iran, it seriously needs Iran's position", the paper quoted him as having said.
Analysts said considering Mr. Reza’i’s close relations with Mr. Hashemi-Rafsanjani, one might take his declarations as being those of the ADIS Chairman.
In a lengthy speech pronounced ten days ago, Mr. Hashemi-Rafsanjani told the Bush Administration "despite of all its differences, Iran stands by the United States".
The move came as the US-led military campaign entered its second week and a period of intense diplomatic activity began with the arrival of Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, to Pakistan, where he is expected to meet president Parviz Mosharraf on Tuesday.
Sources said the use of Pakistan’s military installations and airports by American forces, collaboration of Pakistan with the US in intelligence fields for changing the ruling Taleban in Kabol and the formation of a new, broad-based government headed possibly by the former King Mohammad Zaher Shah and the participation of the Northern Alliance would be among the topics Mr. Powel would discuss with his Pakistani host.
There were hints of concern in Washington that the Northern Alliance, the
Taleban's main opposition could advance rapidly on Kabul, weakening the chances for a broad-based government.
The sources also said that an impromptu meeting in Islamabad between the US Foreign Minister and representatives of the former Afghan King Zaher Shah was "very likely", as a delegation from the Monarch has arrived in Islamabad, bringing a letter from Zaher Shah for General Mosharraf.
Meanwhile a leading Arab newspaper wrote Monday that three of the 22 people on Washington's list of "most wanted terrorists'' were in Iran before the September 11 attacks but have since left.
The London-based, Saudi-owned "Asharq al-Awsat" newspaper quoted a source close to Iran's Revolutionary Guards as saying the three men had spent "months'' in the Islamic republic before the suicide plane attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 5,400 people.
Last week, American experts of terrorism and a former CIA operative said at least seven of the 22 "terrorists" were living in Iran, protected by the Islamic Republic.
The source said one of the men, Imad Moghniyeh, had left Iran "voluntarily'' after he was told "his presence was not to the benefit of Iran and his safety could not be guaranteed after Iranian President Mohammad Khatami agreed to conditional cooperation with the global alliance against terrorism''.
Mr. Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for the Near East said Mr. Moghniyeh, believed to be the chief of the Lebanese Hezbollah’s intelligence and terrorist operations, was working closely with the Iranian security services and is protected by them.
Moughniyeh, a Lebanese, is wanted for the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in Beirut in 1985 and is thought to have been behind the abductions of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s.
He has been indicted for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people, and is the subject of an arrest warrant for the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy there, in which 29 people died.
The source said Ali Atwi, who the U.S. describes as a member of Lebanon's Hezbollah and who is also accused of involvement in the TWA hijacking, had visited Iran several times in 1999 but vanished after former U.S. President Bill Clinton sent a letter to his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Khatami asking for help in hunting down heads of "terrorism".
The Islamic Republic is one of the seven nations on the US's list of "rogue states" supporting and sponsoring terrorism.
Lebanon's Hizbollah and the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Iran rejects the charge and says the groups are fighting for national liberation.
The source did not name the third man, but said a number of those on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation list were Muslim Shi'ites who had studied at a school for Shi'ite scholars in the holy Iranian city of Qom, the newspaper said.
The source said the case of Hezbollah and its leaders was ''completely different as their training courses continued and that tens of them enter and leave Iran freely''. ENDS FT REZA’I 151001