Al Qa'eda rantings seen as good reason for US and Iran to talk

Al Qa'eda's rantings are seen as a good reason for the US and Iran to begin talks.

In a videotaped rant hailing last month's seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qa'eda's deputy leader, spewed as much vitriol against Iran as at the United States. He even accused it of being in collusion with Washington, proclaiming that Iran was co-operating with the "Crusader" Americans in "occupying Iraq and Afghanistan".

Many American hawks choose to see little difference between Iran and al Qa'eda. But pragmatists in Washington argue that Iran and the US are united in their antipathy to the Taliban and al Qa'eda, and their support of the Iraqi government. The Taliban's resurgence alarms neighbouring Iran as much as it does distant America. It is one good reason why the next US president should engage with the Islamic Republic, say advocates of dialogue who can appreciate the irony of Mr Zawahiri highlighting Tehran and Washington's confluence of interests.

Those championing engagement include Hillary Mann Leverett, a former Bush administration official who this week divulged fascinating revelations about the scale of Iran's co-operation with the United States in combating al Qa'eda in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Iran rounded up hundreds of the terror network's suspected operatives who fled across the border when the US invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, she said.

Many were expelled and the Iranians made copies of almost 300 passports of al Qa'eda detainees and sent them to Kofi Annan, the then UN secretary general, Mrs Leverett said. US interrogators also were given a chance to question some of those being held, she revealed. Mrs Leverett, who was a career US Foreign Service officer, said she negotiated with Iran for the Bush administration between 2001 and 2003 and that Tehran sought a better relationship with Washington. "They thought they had been helpful on al Qa'eda and they were," she said, adding that Iran, for instance, had denied sanctuary to suspected al Qa'eda operatives.

Prof Gary Sick, an Iran analyst at Columbia University, who served on the National Security Council under three US presidents, agreed. "The Iranians thought they had built a body of goodwill. It wasn't just to be nice guys. It was in their interests as well," he said in an interview. A predominantly Shiite Muslim country, Iran is strongly opposed to the extremist Sunni Muslim ideology espoused by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, who are violently anti-Shiite. In 1998 the Islamic Republic was on the verge of going to war with Afghanistan after Taliban militia murdered several Iranian diplomats in northern Afghanistan. Iran had identified al Qa'eda as a security threat as far back as 1995.

But some Bush administration officials took the view that Iran had neither acknowledged all likely al Qa'eda members it was holding nor provided access to them, Mrs Leverett told a forum in Washington, hosted by the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan policy institute. Tehran was stunned when George W Bush lumped Iran together with North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq in an "axis of evil" in Jan 2002.

Iranian co-operation on al Qa'eda continued, however. In the summer of that year, Prince Saud al Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said Iran had expelled to his country 16 Saudi al Qa'eda fugitives from Afghanistan. Iran did so knowing that whatever intelligence was gleaned during interrogation by the Saudis would be passed on to the US, he said. "Iran has not only co-operated with Saudi Arabia in this conflict in Afghanistan, but co-operated extensively with the US," Prince Faisal told a US newspaper at the time.

Mrs Leverett's assertion that US interrogators were allowed to question some al Qa'eda detainees and that Iran sent the passports of hundreds of suspects to the UN indicates the depth of that co-operation. Iran deported many al Qa'eda suspects to their homelands such as Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries, despite Tehran's poor relations with the Saudi monarchy and some other nations in the region, she said.

Mrs Leverett made clear Tehran's actions were intended as an olive branch to Washington. Other analysts said Iran also hoped to counter repeated American charges that Tehran was sheltering members of the militant network - accusations Iran has always vehemently denied. Mrs Leverett and her husband, Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst and a former National Security Council official, jointly proposed the next occupant of the White House seek a "grand bargain" with Iran to resolve major outstanding differences.

A jittery Tehran had made such an offer in 2003 following the swift US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. Washington, basking in its military victory before the Iraqi insurgency took hold, promptly rejected the offer. "The next president needs to reorient US policy towards Iran as fundamentally as President Nixon did with China in the 1970s," Mr Leverett said. The bargain would address Iran's nuclear programme and support for groups such as Hizbollah, while the US should clarify it is not seeking change in Iran's Islamic government, but rather its policies. Restoring relations with Tehran, the couple said, would open Iran's oil to the US and give Washington a new "strategic partner" in the Middle East.

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