WASHINGTON - Almost exactly 30 years ago, the United States-backed leader,
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, fled his country, never to return.
Shortly after his departure and the subsequent collapse of the monarchy in
1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran was born.
On Monday, a prominent Iranian human-rights lawyer - often at odds with her own
government, though not opposed to its essence - visited Washington to discuss
the situation in Iran, the difficult relations between the US and the Islamic
Republic and steps towards alleviating resulting tensions built up in the
intervening three decades of hostility.
"Things were bad ... then [in Iran]," said Shirin Ebadi of the era of the shah,
noting that the situation had changed, but not always
for the better. "Now they're bad and different."
A human-rights activist and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ebadi called for
broad-based engagement between Iran and the US. She emphasized dialogue between
non-government actors such as ordinary people and members of civil society.
"There is a history of friendship between Iranian people and American people,"
Ebadi said through a translator at a packed conference room at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace.
"When I speak of dialogue between the civil societies by the countries," she
said, "I'm talking about getting some understanding of the people." She called
for public diplomacy, president-to-president talks, and talks between the
governing houses of the two countries.
Because of her focus on people, Ebadi rejects sanctions, which she says hurt
the citizens of Iran, as well as the use of military force or even the threat
of it. She said that demanding rights for people can only be done in a "period
of peace".
US President Barack Obama campaigned heavily on his desire to meaningfully
engage Iran to address a range of issues, eschewing the more hawkish positions
that include the threat of military force proffered by his predecessor, George
W Bush.
Those in the US pushing for sanctions and military action in Iran are usually
focused on the nuclear issue: Iran's enrichment of uranium, which it claims is
for purposes of peaceful nuclear energy but which critics deride as a front for
the production of nuclear weapons.
"[Talks] shouldn't focus on the nuclear issues," said Ebadi, "but on the
progress of human rights. Negotiations should focus on the people of the
countries."
Obama has yet to unveil an exact plan, but said during the campaign that he
would be willing to engage in diplomacy without preconditions and that he would
be willing to take "regime change", reportedly a consistent unofficial policy
of the Bush administration, off the table if the Iranians made constructive
change to their "behavior".
However, some close observers of Iran issues are concerned about the potential
"Iran envoy" appointment of Dennis Ross, a former US lead negotiator in the
failed efforts for peace between Israelis and Palestinians under both
presidents Bill Clinton and George H W Bush.
Ross' focus with regards to Iran appears to be limited to co-founding and
co-chairing a campaign called "United Against a Nuclear Iran" and as a task
force member of and signatory to a neo-conservative-drafted report called
"Meeting the Challenge: US Policy toward Iranian Nuclear Development".
The report, which was released by the Bipartisan Policy Council in September,
also calls for preconditions, of a sort, for talks with Iran by insisting that
negotiations result in no nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil.
Although Ebadi did not discuss the nuclear issue in detail, she was clear about
US preconditions for negotiations: "In order to resolve the problem, I have
always talked about dialogue with no preconditions."
The organization Ebadi heads, the Center for the Defense of Human Rights, had
its offices shut down and files seized by authorities in late December under
the pretense of a tax evasion investigation. "The office may be closed down,"
Ebadi said in Washington, "but we continue our activities."
In early January, demonstrators gathered around Ebadi's home. The protesters,
one of whom told Iranian press he was a member of the Basij, a paramilitary
group connected to the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, shouted slogans
and vandalized Ebadi's home. One of the vandals spray-painted slogans in Farsi
that read "Shirin Ebadi is American".
The closure of the center and the demonstrations - about which Ebadi called the
police, later telling reporters they simply looked on - were condemned at the
time by Human Rights Watch.
During Monday's briefing, Ebadi was asked if she intended to return to Iran
with the ongoing government crackdown or take refuge in the West for a period.
"I am an Iranian," she responded. "I was born in Iran. I live in Iran. And I
will die in Iran. After I finish my speaking tour in America, I will head home
right away."
The slogans chanted against Ebadi and spray-painted on her home are emblematic
of the tense relationship between the two countries and, particularly, Tehran's
sensitivity to US support for human-rights and democracy activists in Iran.
Women's rights activist Sussan Tahmasebi told Inter Press Service last month
that Bush administration calls for "regime change" had created an excuse for
the government to crack down on rights activists.
But Ebadi was careful to say that the international community should not
hesitate to constructively criticize the human-rights record of the Islamic
Republic. "On the same basis that the government of Iran can speak about
violations of human rights in Palestine," she said, "other governments can talk
about human rights in Iran."
In mid-December, having notified both the Obama transition team and the
then-outgoing Bush administration, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, Howard Berman, tried to set up a meeting with a senior aid to Iran's
Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but was snubbed at the last
minute. The incident, reported on Monday in the Wall Street Journal,
demonstrates the touchy nature of beginning talks after 30 years of cool
relations.
However, the Washington Times reported that at the same time Ebadi was speaking
at the Carnegie Endowment, another sort of outreach was occurring. The US State
Department announced that a US women's badminton team would go to Iran to
participate in a tournament there.
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