President Mohammad Khatami said Tuesday the arrival of an American aid team in this earthquake-ravaged city was a welcome development but should be viewed as just that–a humane gesture, not a harbinger of improving relations between the United States and the Islamic Republic.
“Humanitarian issues should not be intertwined with deep and chronic political problems,” Khatami said at a news conference in Kerman, the provincial capital. “If we see a change both in the tone and behavior of the U.S. administration, then a new situation will develop in our relations.”
In Washington, the Bush administration on Tuesday hailed the contacts between Iran and the United States on earthquake relief as one of several “positive developments” between the two countries in recent months.
“We reached out to the Iranians,” said J. Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman. “We offered our assistance. That offer was accepted, and I don’t think you can see that as anything but a positive development for the people of Iran.”
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Some policy experts said there is now room for maneuvering, a chance to transcend the “axis of evil” and “Great Satan” labels that each country has stuck on the other. Khatami on Tuesday also said the death toll from the quake was likely to reach 30,000. A disaster of such scope can create an opportunity for conversations that otherwise might not have taken place, the experts said.
“It could be interpreted as earthquake diplomacy,” said Davoud Hermitas Bavand, a political scientist at Tehran University. “It could be used as a starting point for dialogue.”
Two U.S. teams sent
The brief transit of about 12 American humanitarian workers through the damaged airport terminal in Tehran caused brief excitement, with Iranian relief volunteers asking to have their pictures taken with the visiting workers when they heard they were Americans.
For their part, the Americans insisted there was nothing political or particularly unusual in their presence.
The last time a large group of Americans was in the country was in January 1981, when 52 American hostages were released from what had been 444 days in captivity at the U.S. Embassy. The seizure of the embassy followed the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which brought to an end the often-brutal 26-year rule of the U.S.-supported Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Two teams of Americans are in Iran, an urban search-and-rescue group from Fairfax, Va., and an international medical response group affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Although the Bush administration dispatched the groups, the Iranians have gone to great lengths to describe them as volunteers.
Asked repeatedly about the issue at his news conference, Khatami said the United States needed to assuage Iranian fears before relations could move forward.
“They must attract our confidence, and that requires resolving our differences,” he said. “They must respect our sovereignty. They keep on saying that they want to overthrow the Islamic Republic. We have not seen good intentions. We hope that the U.S. will change its behavior so that this wall of mistrust will break.”
In recent years, Washington has swung between trying to engage Iran and continuing to treat it as an outcast. Iran recently agreed to more wide-ranging international inspection of its nuclear research facilities, which it insists are for peaceful purposes.
Pullout from Iraq urged
Iran also has voiced support for the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, who launched a bloody, eight-year war across the Iran-Iraq border. The United States was officially neutral but materially supported the Iraqis in that conflict.
At the same time, Iran has urged a speedy U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, evidently nervous at the prospect of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers next door.
In reacting to the American group arriving at Bam, one official drew a comparison.
“You are talking about politics, but these are doctors. They are not Bush or Rumsfeld coming to kill us,” said Mohammad Akbari, Iran’s deputy health minister.
Other countries that have recently had tense relations with Iran, especially regional neighbors Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, were also sending in assistance.
In the past, similar predictions of thaws with Washington have come to nought, including one in 1990 after a private American relief plane landed in Tehran ferrying supplies to the victims of a devastating earthquake in the Caspian region.