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Associated Press is reporting Iranian deputies were gathering signatures to try and form an Iranian-U.S. friendship committee in parliament to hold contacts with the U.S. Congress, legislators involved in the effort said Tuesday. It was the first effort organized by parliament to find a way to bridge nearly three decades of estrangement between the U.S. and Iran. It comes days after the governments of the two countries agreed to hold direct talks on one of the main issues dividing them — the conflict in Iraq. Darioush Ghanbari, one of at least 10 deputies who has signed the document calling for the establishment of the committee, said Iranian parliamentarians were seeking to reduce tensions with America and “explain Iran’s realities to the U.S. Congress.”

The document had signatures from both conservatives and reformists and more signatures from the 290-member legislature were expected by the end of the day, Ghanbari said. “In the absence of formal diplomatic relations, we seek to establish a parliamentary relationship with the U.S. Congress and fill the existing gap of contacts between the two nations,” Ghanbari, a pro-reform lawmaker, told The Associated Press. No specific number of deputies is required to form such a committee. The document signed by lawmakers will be presented to the parliament’s speaker, who has the right to accept or reject it. It was unclear what he would do. The speaker is Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, a close associate of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds final say in all matters in Iran. Haddad Adel is considered a relative moderate among the conservatives and hard-liners who make up Iran’s top leadership, and it is likely he would consult with Khamenei before taking any decision. Washington severed diplomatic ties with Tehran after Iranian militant students stormed its embassy in Tehran in 1979, to protest America’s refusal to hand over Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for trial. Ever since, talk of ties with the United States has long been a taboo among Iran’s hard-line clerical leadership. Hard-liners stymied cautious efforts by reformists in the late 1990s to open up contacts with Americans — though the leadership has condoned occasional talks on specific issues with Washington. One hard-line lawmaker, Saeed Aboutaleb, denounced the effort to create the friendship committee, saying Tuesday, “the nation will strike the mouth of these lawmakers.” Khamenei’s stance on the committee was not known. But Iran’s acceptance of ambassador-level talks with the U.S. on improving Iraq’s security could be a sign the supreme leader sees the need for contact with the United States amid the two countries’ escalating tensions. The United States accuses Iran of fueling Iraq’s violence by backing militants there, a charge Iran denies. Tehran, in turn, says the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is the cause of the country’s turmoil. Washington and its allies also accuse Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons — a charge Iran also denies — and the United Nations has imposed limited sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment. The Iraqi government — which is backed by the United States but also close to Iran — has pushed for the two countries to end their disputes. Proponents of the friendship committee said it could help avert anti-Iranian legislation by the U.S. Congress. “If (Iranian) government officials are reconciling with Americans, why can’t the Iranian nation reconcile with the American people?” said Jalal Hosseini, another Iranian reformist lawmaker who signed the petition. “We are seeking to form this friendship committee to undermine anti-Iran policies of the Bush administration and show our good will and our peace-loving spirits,” he said.

This morning, the New York Times is reporting inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency have concluded that Iran appears to have solved most of its technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before, according to the agency’s top officials. The findings may change the calculus of diplomacy in Europe and in Washington, which has aimed to force a suspension of Iran’s enrichment activities in large part to prevent it from learning how to produce weapons-grade material. In a short-notice inspection of Iran’s main nuclear facility at Natanz on Sunday, conducted in advance of a report to the United Nations Security Council due early next week, the inspectors found that Iranian engineers were already using roughly 1,300 centrifuges and were producing fuel suitable for nuclear reactors, according to diplomats and nuclear experts here.

Until recently, the Iranians were having difficulty keeping the delicate centrifuges spinning at the tremendous speeds necessary to make nuclear fuel, and often were running them empty, or not at all. Now, those roadblocks appear to have been surmounted. “We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the energy agency, who clashed with the Bush administration four years ago when he declared that there was no evidence that Iraq had resumed its nuclear program. “From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that’s a fact.” It is unclear whether Iran can sustain its recent progress. Major setbacks are common in uranium enrichment, and experts say it is entirely possible that miscalculation, equipment failures or sabotage could prevent the Iranian government from reaching its goal of producing fuel on what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasts is “an industrial scale.” The material produced so far would have to undergo further enrichment before it could be transformed into bomb-grade material, and to accomplish that Iran would probably have to evict the I.A.E.A. inspectors, as North Korea did four years ago. Even then it is unclear whether the Iranians would have the technology to produce a weapon small enough to fit atop their missiles, a significant engineering challenge. Iran says its nuclear program is intended to produce energy, not weapons. While the United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution demanding that Iran suspend all of its nuclear activities, and twice imposed sanctions for its refusal to do so, some European nations, and particularly Russia, have questioned whether the demand for suspension still makes sense. The logic of demanding suspension was that it would delay the day that Iran gained the knowledge to produce its own nuclear fuel, what the Israelis used to refer to as “the point of no return.” Those favoring unconditional engagement with Iran have argued that the current strategy was creating a stalemate that the Iranians are exploiting, allowing them to make technological leaps while the Security Council steps up sanctions. The Bush administration, in contrast, has argued that it will never negotiate while the Iranians speed ever closer to nuclear-weapons capacity, saying there has to be a standstill as long as talks proceed. In a telephone interview, R. Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for policy, who is carrying out the Iran strategy, said that while he had not heard about the I.A.E.A.’s newest findings they would not affect American policy. “We’re proceeding under the assumption that there is still time for diplomacy to work,” he said, though he added that if the Iranians did not agree to suspend production by the time the leaders of the largest industrial nations meet next month, “we will move ahead toward a third set of sanctions.” Dr. ElBaradei has always been skeptical of that strategy, telling European foreign ministers that he doubted the Iranians would fully suspend their nuclear activities, and that a face-saving way must be found to resolve the impasse. “Quite clearly suspension is a requirement by the Security Council, and I would hope the Iranians would listen to the world community,” he said. “But from a proliferation perspective, the fact of the matter is that one of the purposes of suspension — keeping them from getting the knowledge — has been overtaken by events. The focus now should be to stop them from going to industrial scale production, to allow us to do a full-court-press inspection and to be sure they remain inside the treaty.” The report to the Security Council next week is expected to say that since February 2006, when the Iranians stopped complying with an agreement on broad inspections around the country by the agency, the I.A.E.A.’s understanding of “the scope and content” of Iran’s nuclear activities has deteriorated. Inspectors are concerned that Iran has declined to answer a series of questions, posed more than a year ago, about information Iran probably received from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer. Of particular interest is a document that shows how to make uranium into spheres, a shape suitable for use in a weapon. The inspection conducted on Sunday took place on two hours’ notice, a period so short that it appears unlikely that the Iranians could have turned on their centrifuges to impress the inspectors. According to diplomats familiar with the inspectors’ report, in addition to 1,300 working centrifuges, 300 more were being tested and appeared ready to be fed raw nuclear fuel as soon as late this week, the diplomats said. Another 300 were reported to be under construction. The I.A.E.A. reported more than a week ago that approximately 1,300 centrifuges were in place, but nuclear experts here said that what struck them now was that all the centrifuges appeared to be enriching uranium and running smoothly. “They are at the stage where they are doing one cascade a week,” said one diplomat familiar with the analysis of Iran’s activities, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the information. A cascade has 164 centrifuges, and experts say that at this pace, Iran could have 3,000 centrifuges operating by June — enough, if the uranium were enriched further, to make one bomb’s worth of nuclear material every year. Tehran may, the diplomat said, be able to build an additional 5,000 centrifuges by the end of the year, for a total of 8,000. The inspectors have tested the output and concluded that Iran is producing reactor-grade uranium, enriched to a little less than 5 percent purity. But that still worries American officials and I.A.E.A. experts. If Iran stores the uranium and later runs it through centrifuges for four or five more months, it can raise the enrichment to 90 percent, the level needed for a nuclear weapon. Some Bush administration officials and some nuclear experts here at the I.A.E.A. and elsewhere suspect that the Iranians may not be driving for a weapon but the ability to have sufficient stockpiles of low-enriched uranium that they could produce a bomb within months of evicting inspectors, as North Korea did in 2003. That capacity alone could serve as a nuclear deterrent. One senior European diplomat, who declined to speak for attribution, said that Washington would now have to confront the question of whether it wants to keep Iran from producing any nuclear material, or whether it wants to keep it from gaining the ability to build a weapon on short notice. Continued stalemate, the diplomat said, allows Iran to move toward that ability. But hawks in the administration say that the only position President Bush can take now, without appearing to back down, is to stick to the administration’s past argument that “not one centrifuge spins” in Iran. They argue for escalating sanctions and the threat that, if diplomacy fails, the United States could destroy the nuclear facilities. But even inside the administration, many officials, particularly in the State Department and the Pentagon, argue that military action would create greater chaos in the Middle East and Iranian retribution against American forces in Iraq, and possibly elsewhere. Moreover, they have argued that Iran’s enrichment facilities are still at an early enough stage that a military strike would not set the country’s program back very far. Such a strike, they argue, would make sense only once large facilities had been built.

A US-Iranian academic detained in Iran last week is being investigated for suspected “security” crimes, officials in Tehran have said. Haleh Esfandiari, 67, was being held in Tehran’s Evin prison, Iranian judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi said. Mr Jamshidi said the investigation was still going on, without giving any further details. The US has condemned the arrest of Ms Esfandiari, who works at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington.

The incident comes at a time of continuing tension between the United States and Iran over Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme. “[Ms Esfandiari] is right now under the authority of the intelligence ministry,” Mr Jamshidi told reporters in Tehran. “Her crime is security issues,” the spokesman added. Ms Esfandiari - one of Washington’s best known experts on Iran - was visiting the Iranian capital to see her 93-year-old mother. She was detained on 8 May, after being prevented from leaving Iran for several months. In December, as she was on her way to the airport to return to the US, her taxi was stopped by three men who stole her belongings, including her Iranian and US passports. When she went to replace her passport, she was sent to the intelligence ministry where she was repeatedly questioned about her work at the Woodrow Wilson Centre. The Iranian authorities appear to be particularly suspicious currently of attempts by the Bush administration to promote democratic change in Iran, says the BBC’s Middle East analyst, Roger Hardy. In making public the plight of Ms Esfandiari, the director of the Wilson Centre, Lee Hamilton, said last week that the centre promoted debate about Iran - reflecting a wide range of views - and received no government money to influence Iranian policies.

Iran’s ruling clerics have long prided themselves on running the world’s only Shi’ite Muslim state — a state that imposes religion, dictating what imams can preach, what the media can report, and what people can wear. So some Iranians are intrigued by the more freewheeling experiment in Shi’ite empowerment taking place across the border in Iraq, where — Iraq’s myriad problems aside — imams can say whatever they want in political Friday sermons, newspapers and satellite channels regularly slam the government, and religious observance is respected and encouraged but not required. In Tehran’s storied central bazaar, an increasing number of merchants are sending their religious donations, a 20 percent tithe expected from all who can spare it, to Iraq’s most senior Shi’ite cleric — rather than to clerics closer to Iran’s state power structure, said Jawad al-Ghaie, 48, a wholesaler of false eyelashes and nail extensions and a respected lay donor.

 

Speaking carefully to avoid directly challenging the Iranian government, he and several fellow merchants suggested that Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani holds more spiritual sway because of his lifelong commitment to quietism. That is the school of thought that says Shi’ite leaders should stay out of government, and Sistani has stuck to it despite the great temptation to wade into the chaos of Iraqi politics. Haamed Hussein Warraqi, another merchant, contrasted the different ways in which Sistani and the Iranian religious authorities deal with overly exuberant revelers on Arbayeen, an important Shi’ite holiday. In Iran, he said, riot police line the streets to rein in men who cut their scalps with knives — a show of mourning that the Iranian government and some religious scholars deem Islamically incorrect. In contrast, “Sistani uses the authority of his word,” said Warraqi, 27. “The domain of Sistani is in religion, and he is obeyed by the people. Here they want to rule according to politics. That’s why they have to use the riot police.” “Any time religion is imposed by the government,” Ghaie added, “there is a bad reaction.” The war in Iraq has failed to produce the democracy domino effect that its US advocates contended would crack open calcified regimes across the Middle East. Instead, Iraq’s violence has handed repressive governments from Iran to US allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia a propaganda opportunity to equate democracy with chaos. But ever since US-sponsored elections brought the Shi’ite majority to power, Iraq’s imperfect liberation has quietly influenced the debate among religious Shi’ites about the role of religion in government . After Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini founded a state that rests on his concept of velayat e faqi, or guardianship of the jurist. There are elections and parliamentary debates, but ultimate authority rests with a supreme leader who is appointed by a council of clerics. Traditionally, Shi’ites have believed that clerics should stay out of politics until the return of the Mahdi, the last of the revered early Shi’ite imams, who disappeared in the ninth century. Shi’ites believe he went into hiding and will someday reveal himself. Only he can establish a perfect Islamic state, according to traditional believers — including some in the Tehran bazaar, whose influential religious merchant class backed the revolution but has since grown more skeptical of the ruling clerics. “Only the Mahdi is the genuine leader,” said Ghaie’s brother Mohammad, 45, whose family, like many Iranian merchants, has lived in both Iran and Iraq over generations. Expressing such opinions is dangerous: Several prominent religious scholars — chief among them Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri — are under house arrest or other official sanctions for opposing clerical rule or proposing limits on it. The quietist philosophy suited disempowered Shi’ites, who through most of their history lived under Sunni powers. Shi’ites are a minority among Muslims and within all modern Middle Eastern states except Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain. But now, in Iraq, Shi’ites are witnessing a new alternative: They can defend their rights at the ballot box, without establishing a religious state. “We believe that politics is separate from religion,” said Iraq’s ambassador to Iran, Mohammed Majid al-Sheikh. “Of course there are debates about this. If Iran wants to take on these debates, it will benefit. And I could say that the experiment of Iraq will ripple throughout the Middle East.” Iran has worked hard to influence Iraq. US officials have accused it of fomenting violence there. Analysts say Iran welcomes low-grade chaos in Iraq in part to prevent the emergence of a democratic Shi’ite alternative that could embolden Iranian reformists, while at the same time courting Shi’ite Iraqis by presenting itself as a stable and benign neighbor. But influence is a two-way street, especially between two countries whose shrine cities and capitals have been tied by trade and pilgrimage for centuries. About 1,500 Iranians go to Iraq on pilgrimage every day, Sheikh said. The Ghaie brothers went recently and were impressed to see the parade of Iraqi politicians visiting Sistani’s modest house in Najaf — voluntarily — for advice. Last month, the Iranian press reported, Jalaluddin Taheri, a dissident cleric who resigned as Isfahan’s Friday prayer leader in 2002 after criticizing the regime as corrupt and autocratic, went to Najaf to pay respects to Sistani. The representative of Iraq’s most pro-Iran political party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, touted Iraq’s freer system. Majid Ghamas contended in an interview in his Tehran office that Iranians, because of their country’s somewhat competitive elections, have more freedom than Saudis, Jordanians, or Egyptians. “But not as much as in Iraq,” he said, “now that we have a government that respects Islam and the rituals of Islam but does not impose Islam by force so that it becomes a rigid Islam.” But persuading the Iranian masses that their country should emulate Iraq would be an uphill battle. “If there were security there, these changes [in Iraq] could be appreciated” by Iranians, he said. “But without security you cannot appreciate anything else.” In Ghaie’s shop, on a lively mezzanine in the bazaar lined with shops selling stuffed elephants and Big Bird dolls, Warraqi, the younger merchant, lamented that Iraq’s experiment would be “impossible here.” Asked why, he said, “Iranian Shi’ites, when they are suppressed, they are mute. When the Iraqis are oppressed, they explode.” Mohammad al-Ghaie said, “We’ve taken lessons from the Iranian government.”

Source: The Boston Globe