Rooyesh

Asharq Al-Awsat has learned the decision to assign the head of the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations (UN), Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, as the head of the Iranian delegation to Iraq was cancelled in the 11th hour before yesterday’s meeting with the American delegation headed by US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker in Baghdad. This decision was the outcome of the direct intervention of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in addition to the Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s blessing.

Dr. Mohammad Javad will be returning permanently to Iran at the beginning of July of this year. It had been Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and the most influential man in Iran, Dr. Ali Larijani’s, suggestion to appoint Dr. Zarif as head of the delegation. Dr. Larijani had recently tendered his resignation, which was rejected by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as exclusively reported by Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper last Monday 21st May. The secretary of Supreme National Security Council had suggested Zarif on condition that the delegation includes his brother, Dr. Mohammad Javad Larijani, who is known for his enthusiasm to resume relations between Iran and the US. Mohammad Javad Larijani is one of the most distinguished experts in the field of physics in Iran. He had previously assumed the post of deputy foreign minister for several years during Imam Khomeini’s era. Mohammad Javad Larijani was relieved of his duties after repeatedly calling for establishing relations with the US. Unlike his younger brother, Ali Larijani, Mohammad Javad holds a doctorate degree in physics from the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is fluent in the English language, and is furthermore known to admire American society and culture. According to Asharq Al-Awsat sources in the Iranian capital, the subject of the presidency of the Iranian delegation to Baghdad is one that has occupied the Iranian leadership for several days. The leadership of the Iranian |Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is entitled with Iraqi affairs, had expressed concern that sending Zarif and Larijani to Baghdad would pose a threat to their interest and offer indirect support to the reformist and liberalist parties calling for a reconciliation with the United States. Zarif is known for his liberalist orientations and for his close ties with the media and academic circles and US research centers specializing in Middle Eastern affairs. The leadership of IRGC was able to convince President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Mohammad Javad Zarif and Mohammad Javad Larijani are not suitable to represent the ‘Iranian revolution’ before the representatives of ‘Great Satan’, moreover adding that they were ill-suited to bear such a serious responsibility. This information was affirmed by the Deputy Commander of the IRGC and supervisor of its intelligence authority, Brigadier General Morteza Rezaie, in a statement addressed to Ahmadinejad. A source close to the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani told Asharq Al-Awsat that after meeting with Ahmadinejad, the Supreme Guide expressed his objection to the dispatch of Zarif and Larijani as part of the delegation. The source pointed out that Zarif himself had not been eager to chair the delegation and that he had informed the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki of that. This is based on his belief that the talks would revolve around security and intelligence issues, which Zarif maintained he was not entitled with and furthermore suggested that a more suitable candidate would be someone working with intelligence or with the IRGC. Iranian Ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, is a senior officer in the IRGC Al Quds force and was appointed Consul in the Afghan province of Herat after the fall of the Taliban regime. He was summoned to Tehran at the request of the Afghan government by virtue of “his activities that were contrary to diplomatic work”, after which he was sent to Iraq as an adviser to the Iranian charge d’affaires, Mohammad Irani, but soon replaced Irani and was thus promoted to the rank of ambassador in accordance with a direct order from the Iranian Supreme Guide and amidst the surprise of Foreign Ministry officials. Asharq Al-Awsat has discovered that Kazemi-Qomi had been among the advisers to the military security committee, which is affiliated to the leadership of the Revolutionary Guard and which has been entitled with Iraqi affairs since 2004. Kazemi-Qomi has maintained close relationships with most of the Shiaa leaders in Iraq ¬– particularly militia leaders. Supreme Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, according to an Iranian source that closely observes the affairs of the supreme authority, had shunned Kazemi-Qomi since his arrival to Baghdad for a number of reasons, including the Iranian embassy’s attempts, during al Sistanti’s term, to weaken the status of the supreme authority through supporting people such as Muqtada al Sadr. Tehran has dispatched three officers from the IRGC and the Al Quds force intelligence who are involved in Iranian affairs, as well as a diplomat who is a specialist in Iraqi affairs, to Baghdad to accompany Ambassador Kazemi-Qomi in his meeting with Ambassador Ryan Crocker and those accompanying him, according to a source from Asharq Al-Awsat. The Iranian delegation will present a paper containing preliminary claims that Tehran believes need to be achieved as a serious first step towards a comprehensive settlement of the problems that have existed between the two countries since the past 28 years. The demands include: - Putting an end to all activities that aim at destabilizing the regime in Tehran, including the propaganda against the Iranian regime broadcast by the ‘Voice of America’ satellite channel, which has a large audience in Iran. - The expulsion of elements of Mujahedin el-Khalq (MEK) from Iraq as a goodwill gesture, especially since the US considers MEK and the affiliated resistance council as terrorist organizations. This is despite the fact that American forces allowed approximately 3,000 members of the MEK to remain in Iraq after they were disarmed at Camp Ashraf in the al Khales area (60 kilometers north of Baghdad) and remain under the tight grip of a Bulgarian battalion. Tehran believes that Washington might use these elements, as it did in Afghanistan with the Northern Alliance forces, to stir up unrest in Iran and in preparation for its potentially possible military attack. - The release of the five detained officers of Al-Quds Corps who were arrested over four months ago in the area of Arbil in northern Iraq. Releasing dozens of Iraqis of Iranian origin who were detained by US forces in Iraq on various charges, including mediating in terrorist activities and supporting terrorists. - The cancellation of arbitrary measures against Iranian clerics coming to Iraq to study in the hawzas of Najaf and Karbala, and to allow Iranians to visit holy shrines regularly without subjecting them to interrogation or provocative procedures. Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper was informed that Iraqi Vice President, Adel Abdul Mahdi, has encouraged Iranian officials to show more flexibility than previously shown during talks with the American ambassador. This is in order to support the Iraqi government in overcoming ‘the Iranian complex’, which is a major obstacle confronting the process of strengthening the authority of the Iraqi government, in addition to the restriction of the American role in Iraq.

Arab officials and commentators appeared content that Washington and Tehran had finally started talking, but expressed concern Tuesday that the budding dialogue could cut them out of the loop over the future of Iraq, one of the region’s most important countries. Many of the Iraq Sunni Muslim-dominated neighbors fret that the U.S.-Iran dialogue would further boost Iran’s influence over Iraq’s majority Shiites.

“Iraq should not be stripped out of its Arab identity, especially as Iraq is one of the outstanding members and founder of the Arab League,” Ahmed ben Heli, the Arab League’s undersecretary general told reporters in Cairo Tuesday. The League’s chief, Amr Moussa said the group had always “called for U.S.-Iranian dialogue” and called the Baghdad talks a “reassuring and a positive step toward diplomatic dialogue instead of the military confrontations.” But the United States and Iran are “not the only sides … concerned with the situation in Iraq,” Moussa added. “Developments in Iraq should not be conducted away from the Arabs’ interests. As neighboring countries, we have interests because Iraq is part of the Arab League.” Suspicion over American and Iranian intentions in Iraq was running high in Arab capitals, a day after U.S. and Iranian ambassadors discussed the seemingly unstoppable sectarian violence that has engulfed Iraq four years after the U.S.-led invasion. The four-hour meeting in Baghdad on Monday broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze. The session, according to both sides, did not veer into other difficult issues that encumber the U.S.-Iranian relationship — primarily Iran’s nuclear program and the more than a quarter-century history of diplomatic estrangement. The Americans said there was broad policy agreement but that Iran must stop arming and financing militants who are attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces. Abdulaziz Sager, the director of Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, said Iran was deftly exploiting Iraq’s chaos by using its talks with the Americans for its own ends, which differ with those of Iraq’s neighbors. “We don’t want Iraq to become an Iranian satellite,” Sager said. Gulf states fear being dominated by a resurgent Iran — and one which may be armed with nuclear weapons in a few years. Sager said there were concerns because Monday’s talks had skirted the issue of Iran’s disputed nuclear program. One Gulf government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, said his country — just across the Persian Gulf from Iran — was busy calculating how its security situation could change by a nuclear-armed Iran that stands to be allied with Iraq. The Associated Press

Azadeh Moaveni reports for the New York Times. When I moved to Iran in 2000 to work as a journalist, I aspired to belong to a literary circle not unlike that of the engaged women of Azar Nafisi’s “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” who found relief from their authoritarian society in the imaginative world of novels. That bookstores did not exist as such — there were only bookstore/stationery stores, or bookstore/toy stores — was the first sign my plan might not work. I initially mistook Tehran’s most popular bookstore, with its windows full of weathered copper pots and other bric-a-brac, for an antique shop.

Inside, the floor space dedicated to books was roughly a quarter of that taken up by kilims, cactuses and Lego sets. “I’m embarrassed to call myself a bookseller,” one store owner told me recently, gazing at the wall of Hello Kitty accessories that dominated his shop. In the hour we spent talking, customers came in to buy watch batteries, a condolence card, wrapping paper and a compass. Not a single person bought a book. When I failed to persuade any of the women I knew to form a book club (they found the suggestion precious and downright impractical, given Tehran traffic), I began to wonder why books figured so little in the lives of my otherwise intellectually curious friends. But during the long afternoons I spent exploring the cramped storefront shops attached to the publishing houses on Karim Khan-e Zand Street, I grew to understand their reluctance. By and large, the books Iranians seemed to be reading did not lend themselves to discussion, except with a therapist. Self-help books and their eclectic offshoots, on topics like Indian spirituality and feng shui, enjoy the most prominent position on bookstore front tables. The emergence of the genre, which did not exist before the 1979 Islamic revolution, may suggest a culture trying to cope with the erosion of traditional gender roles, or with rising rates of divorce and premarital sex. But Iranian intellectuals are quick to blame “cultural repression and spiritual crisis,” as one prominent magazine editor said to me, or as a friend who owns a bookstore put it, Iranians who have “lost their minds.” The success of translated titles like “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” has given rise to some homegrown authors’ specializing in more culturally specific advice. The title of one current best seller, Mahmoud Namany’s “Please Do Not Be a Sheep,” is borrowed from Ali Shariati, the Islamist sociologist who helped inspire the revolution. With chapter titles like “Grief Therapy” and “How to Choose Friends,” it tailors its vision of self-fulfillment to a society where you are expected to commemorate even the anniversary of the death of your paternal great-aunt. “Do you want to be an exalted human, a cud-regurgitating animal, filth or an angel?” Namany asks in one chapter. When Iranians aren’t reading about depression or the harmonious arrangement of furniture, they’re drawn to soap-opera-ish novels about family life and chaste, unrequited love, bearing titles like “The Solitude of Lonely Nights.” After the revolution, which created a caste of literate women with no more social clubs or cultural centers to frequent, the market for women’s popular fiction swelled. Demand is highest for Persian translations of Danielle Steel (with intimate scenes either blotted out or obliterated by euphemism) and her Iranian equivalents, Fahimeh Rahimi and M. Moaddabpour, neither of whom has ever been seen on television (used in Iran mainly to promote state ideology, soap and rice). The most popular novel of the last two decades, Fattaneh Haj Seyyed Javadi’s “Listless Morning,” about an idle aristocratic family under the 19th-century Qajar monarchy, has sold an unheard-of 185,000 copies since 1998 and spawned dozens of imitations. When I arrived seven years ago, writers and publishers were making the same predictions about the impending death of reading heard perennially in the United States. In a nation of 70 million with a nearly 80 percent literacy rate and a centuries-old literary tradition, they argued, book sales — 40,000 copies for a typical commercial best seller and 2,000 to 5,000 for novels and literary nonfiction — were dismal. According to Mohammad-Reza Neymatpour of the Nashr-e Nay publishing house, sales have been declining steadily since 1979. Though books are inexpensive by any standard — generally costing no more than the price of a couple of sandwiches — little in public life encourages reading. There are few public libraries, no reading contests in schools and scarce promotion of any book apart from the book. (Billboards inform Iranians that if they can memorize the Koran in its entirety, they will be awarded a formal university degree.) Even the government is growing concerned. In advance of the Tehran Book Fair, held earlier this month, the state newspaper, Iran, published a scolding article under the headline “Let Us Learn How to Read.” In April, an announcer on state radio lamented that the average Iranian spends only 16 seconds a day reading. From 1999 to 2002, during the hopeful presidency of the reform-minded Mohammad Khatami (a former head of Iran’s national library), Iran seemed to be undergoing a literary revival. The publishing houses with in-store shops invested in attractive décor, better lighting and cafes. I would meet friends for coffee, browse magazines and take home a few books, which suddenly had elegant ornamental covers — the complete Barnes & Noble experience. But much like the Khatami era itself, Tehran’s literary spring was fleeting. Independent journalists published a handful of daring books, most importantly Akbar Ganji’s “Dark House of Ghosts,” which implicated senior officials in the killings of intellectuals in the late 1990s. But as the hard-line establishment cracked down, several journalist-authors went to prison, and many in-store cafes were closed on various pretexts. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance was chastised for relaxing its standards and resumed vetting books with the same humorless strictness. The ministry checks manuscripts mainly for erotic and religious transgression. Today, if a novel has made it past the censors, most Iranians assume that it has been tampered with and that they are better off searching for the Shah-era edition or the bootleg film version. Even in fiction, all relationships must conform to Islamic law. In the most recent vetted edition of “Madame Bovary,” for example, Emma’s adultery is omitted. Characters in Western novels who drink Champagne or whiskey find themselves uniformly sipping doogh, an Iranian yogurt soda that has never made anyone tipsy. Occasionally, a work of homegrown fiction manages to be both absorbing and benign by the standards of Islamic decency. Saideh Ghods’s best-selling novel “Kimia Khatoun,” which revisits the life of Shams-e Tabrizi, the Sufi mystic who inspired the poetry of Rumi, from the perspective of Tabrizi’s discontented wife, is a case in point. Published in 2004, it stirred huge controversy for its powerful feminist narrative and bold suggestion that the women behind Persia’s great literary men might have preferred to be elsewhere. Still, for every successful novel, there are 10 that never make it past the censor or off the author’s desk. In some cases, the authorities embargo published books after they have already approved them. As a result, publishers are reluctant to commission new works and often sit on manuscripts for years. Some have turned away from contemporary literature altogether. The Western fascination with Rumi, for example, has heightened the already enthusiastic interest in Iran, and publishers are putting out new criticism and fresh translations. “The Persian classics create fewer problems,” Mohammad-Reza Zolfaghari, an editor at the Chaveh publishing house, said. For some, literary journalism offers something of a way out. Though they practice self-censorship, the dozens of small magazines that thrive in Iran find themselves less constricted. With circulations of 2,000 to 5,000, they offer a mélange of criticism, essays and sketches by accomplished, polyglot writers who in a different Iran would be writing books. “Since people don’t trust books anymore, it is the journals that are keeping literary culture alive,” Reza Seyyed Hosseini, Iran’s pre-eminent translator of French literature, said. They also expose Iranians to international authors. At a former military barracks bequeathed by Khatami to “art,” the journal Bukhara hosts a popular evening literary series dedicated to writers like Umberto Eco and Orhan Pamuk — the first time in recent history that literary events have figured importantly in Tehran’s cultural calendar. Still, Iranians face the sometimes difficult task of tracking down those authors’ work. Often the search leads to the book stalls around Tehran University, which do a brisk black-market trade. Like booksellers everywhere, the proprietors are brimming with recommendations. When I bought a Virginia Woolf novel not long ago, one confided, “If you give me a week, I can get you Joyce Carol Oates.”

Associated Press is reporting U.S. academic Haleh Esfandiari and two other Iranian-Americans have been charged with endangering national security and espionage, Iran’s judiciary spokesman said Tuesday. “Esfandiari has been formally charged with endangering national security through propaganda against the system and espionage for foreigners. … The complainant is the Intelligence Ministry,” judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters.

“She has been informed of the charges against her,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. Jamshidi did not say when the specific allegations had been read to Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. She has been held at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison since early May. Jamshidi said the same charges also had been lodged against Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant who also has worked for the World Bank, and journalist Parnaz Azima. No trial date has been announced and Jamshidi said the investigation against the three is continuing. Azima, who works for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda, was detained but released and barred from leaving the country. It was the first time the government has confirmed the arrest of Tajbakhsh, who was believed to have been taken into custody around May 11, according to George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Esfandiari’s husband, Shaul Bakhash, said from his home in Potomac, Md., that the charges “are totally without foundation, whether it is espionage or propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” Bakhash said Esfandiari is being represented by the law firm of 2003 Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, but that the Iranian government has refused access to Esfandiari in Evin Prison. Esfandiari last called her mother in Tehran on Sunday night, but the call was “extremely short” and yielded no new information about her fate, he said. Laura Silber, a spokeswoman for Soros’ Open Society Institute in New York said the organization was “dismayed at the charges” against Tajbakhsh, describing him as an “internationally respected scholar.” “The charges are completely without merit,” Silber told The Associated Press by telephone. “We are very concerned for Dr. Tajbakhsh’s safety and urge the Iranian authorities to release him immediately.” In Washington, the State Department said it had no information about any formal charges being lodged, and it repeated calls for them to be released. “These are individuals that have family ties to Iran, have done independent research and other kinds of civil society activities there for many years,” deputy spokesman Tom Casey said. “They certainly pose no threat or challenge to the regime and we continue to believe they should be released as soon as possible.” Iran’s Intelligence Ministry has accused Esfandiari and her organization of trying to set up networks of Iranians with the ultimate goal of creating a “soft revolution” in Iran, along the lines of the revolts that ended Communist rule in Eastern Europe. The ministry has alleged that the Open Society Institute, which seeks to promote democracy, was part of the conspiracy. The Wilson Center and the Open Society Institute deny the allegations. Under Iranian law, the distinction between someone being accused and charged is less clear than in the United States and many Western countries, especially in matters of national security. Security courts have wide latitude, with the option of dropping the proceedings at any time or even holding trials in secret. However, Jamshidi’s statement that specific allegations had been read to Esfandiari and the others indicates the cases have been raised to a new level under the Iranian legal system. Bakhash said the formal charges are “very worrisome.” “I think it certainly ratchets up the case against her several notches in a rather menacing way,” he said. The 67-year-old Esfandiari has for years brought prominent Iranians to Washington to talk about the political situation in Iran, some of whom have been subsequently detained and questioned back home. Her defenders say some of those she brought to the U.S. were supporters of the Iranian government who sought to explain Tehran’s stance to Americans. Esfandiari had been trapped in Iran since December, when three masked men with knives stole her luggage and passport as she headed to the airport to leave the country, the Wilson Center said. In the weeks before her arrest, she was called in for questioning daily on her activities, it said. Iran has stepped up accusations that the United States is trying to use internal critics to destabilize the government. Tensions have mounted between the two countries over Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. allegations that the Iranians have been supporting armed groups in Iraq. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard-line government has also increased restrictions on local non-governmental organizations, particularly women’s rights groups and other critics.

On May 13 of this year Iran declared its readiness to hold talks with the United States over the security of Iraq. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the leader of the Islamic Republic declared Iran will participate in the Baghdad Conference because of request from Iraqi government officials to improve security in Iraq. He stated in this meeting the Iranian government will remind “the occupying power of its responsibility”. The approval of Iranian supreme leader has surprised many political observers.

The United States and Iran will hold their first official face-to-face meeting on May 28, 2007 in Baghdad in the ambassador level. According to the news reports, Hassan Kazemi-Quomi the Iranian ambassador to the Iraq will be heading the Iranian delegation and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, will represent the U.S. in this conference. Both countries have place the Iraqi security as their main agenda and have not shown interest in discussing their own disagreements. Many political observers believe the Baghdad conference can be a starting point which will lead to further discussion on other conflicting issues between both sides. The question is whether this conference will open a new diplomatic opportunity or will escalate the tensions between both countries in the future. The Iranian revolution of 1979 and occupation of the U.S. embassy by the Iranian students broke the direct diplomatic relationship between both countries in April 1980. Although, it is not the first time Iranian and American officials have met since breaking diplomatic relationship, this meeting has unprecedented aspects because of the willingness of both sides to openly discuss Iraq’s security and blessing of Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei. The negotiation over releasing the U.S. hostages in Iran in 1980, selling arms to Iran and traveling of Robert McFarlane a member of U.S. National Security Council to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war which is known as Iran-Contra, and the positive participation of Iranian government to set up a new government in Afghanistan after the collapse of Taliban in 2001 are some of the indirect contacts between both countries in the last three decades. This negotiation is taking place at the time that five Iranian citizens are still under the U.S. custody. In January of 2007 the U.S. army raided a building in Irbil, Iraq and arrested Iranian citizens. The U.S. claimed the five citizens were agents of Qudes Army who were training Iraqi insurgents. The Iranian government has rejected this allegation and has claimed they are Iranian diplomats who have been performing their diplomatic tasks in Iraq with Iraqi government’s knowledge. As continuous pressure on Iran, one week before the approval of negotiation by Supreme Leader, U.S. Vice President, Dick Cheney, on the U.S. Naval Ship, USS John C. Stennis, only 240 km from the Iranian shores gave a threaten message to the Iranian government, “the United States would join allies to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons and dominating the region.” On other hand, Iran’s continued influence on the region through the collapse of its two arch enemies of Tehran by Washington and its persisting enriching of uranium have worried the countries of the region. Hence, the American government through an international consensus, successfully, has put unprecedented pressure on the Iranian regime. It seems that flexibility of the Iranian government for the readiness of negotiation is the result of the international pressures. The escalation of the conflict in Iraq and danger of a civil war compelled the U.S. administration to appoint a panel to examine the situation in Iraq on March 15, 2006 and find a better strategy for reducing violence. This panel was headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton. One of the recommendations from the Baker-Hamilton Commission was for the U.S. to negotiate with Iraq’ neighbors including Iran and Syria regarding Iraqi security. This recommendation as well as Democrats taking power both in U.S. houses on November 7, 2006 pressured the administration to consider talking with both Syria and Iran. September 11, 2001 was a turning point in the history; it propelled the United States to find a new approach to the Middle East in order to fight radical Islamism. This policy is known as “Greater Middle East”; it suggests that the current repressive governments provide a fertile ground for the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. As part of this plan, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein and set up a democratic and pro-western government as a model for the rest of the Muslim world. The continuous escalation of the violence in Iraq is a fundamental challenge for the America’s “Greater Middle East” policy. To rescue the “Greater Middle East” policy, the American government has no choice except to find a viable and urgent solution for Iraqi security. One of the objectives for the United States at this conference will be to give a stern warning to Iran, a country the U.S. alleges frequently is an obstacle to Iraqi security, and to stop its destructive intervention in Iraq. In general, the Iraq issue is a matter of life and death for the United State’s policy toward the Middle East. Iran has declared it is attending this conference because of the Iraqi government’s request. Tehran has been the big winner in this conflict the United States overthrew one of its arch enemies Saddam Hussein and subsequently a Shiite government that is closed to the Iranian government has taken the power. Although Iran has declared that the conference is limited to Iraq security issue, it seems Iran’s objectives goes beyond the security of Iraq. One of the issues that exists between both countries is the suspicious by the Iranian that the U.S. wants to overthrow the government. The recent arrest of Iranian-American scholars, Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, and Ali Shakari as well as Radio Farda reporter, Parinaz Aziama is not a coincidence on the eve of the conference because the Iranian government wants to indicate America’s intervention in its internal affair. Another issue is Iran’s demand of five Iranian citizens arrested in Irbil be released. Iran’s quest for nuclear technology as well as Tehran’s desire to be recognized as a regional power in the Middle East are some of the other objectives for Tehran. It seems Tehran wants to use the conference as a scene to address its own concerns with the Americans. Although Iran has repeatedly said that it wants the “occupy forces” to leave Iraq, its true intention might be otherwise. The U.S. forces leaving Iraq at this time can create a chaotic situation and put the Shiite government in danger of collapse which will harm Iran’s interest in Iraq. Furthermore, the vacuum of the withdrawal of the U.S. forces can be filled by the Sunni forces which are backed from Saudi Arabia and it can put Shiites under pressure and diminish the power of Iran in the region. The May 28 conference in Baghdad between Tehran and Washington is unprecedented event. But it is not a manifestation of changing strategies by both countries. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran is continuing with its enriching uranium for nuclear technology and it is continuing its support of Shiite elements in Iraq and Hezbollah. The United States is also continuing with its past policies; according to ABC news, President Bush has authorized a CIA a covert operation against Iran; the U.S. and its allies also have called for tougher sanction against Iran because of Tehran’s refusal to halt its nuclear program. Iran does not want to stop its nuclear program. There is no sign to indicate the Iranian government has stopped its support of fundamentalist groups in the region. On the other hand the United States can not accept Iran’s nuclear activities while it will try to cease Iran’s support of the fundamentalist group. In fact, the progress of “Greater Middle East” policy contradicts with the foundation of Iran’s political behavior in the international and internal realm. Thus, we can not be very optimistic about the Baghdad conference as a starting point to open an official relationship between two countries. It is not far from reality that the Baghdad conference could turn to a scene of mutual accusations instead of finding a practical solution to the security of Iraq. The beginning of official relationship with the Untied States means a fundamental failure for the ideology of the government which one of its components is anti-Americanism. Furthermore, the failure of this conference can add another layer on the thick wall of suspicious which exists between both countries, the suspicious that can escalate tensions between both countries in the future. The failure of this conference can lead to an unpredictable event.

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