November 23, 2000
"Gone with the Wind"
By Dariush Sajjadi
Most Iranians who immigrated to the
US after the 1979 Islamic Revolution are financially well-heeled and
academically top-notch, features that could make Iranian Americans influential.
But the Iranians’ historic individualism has seriously blocked them from
acting as a convergent group and thus prevented them from serving as a powerful
US lobby bent on fostering their motherland’s national interests.
This feature has been further
ingrained in the post Islamic Revolution era through the Iranian government’s
paranoid outlook toward Iranians abroad and through the expatriate Iranians’
deep-seated distrust of Iranian officialdom, a distrust that has prompted them
to equate "opposition with the Islamic Republic" with intellectualism.
Mohammad Khatami’s sweeping 1997
presidential victory, his popular mandate, and his motto of "Iran for all
Iranians" somewhat assuaged the hostility between Tehran and Iranian
expatriates, but there is still a long way to go to root out this animosity. As
such, the Khatami administration has not as yet been able to mobilize the
US-based Iranians as a lobby that would foster the interests of the reformist
camp.
Also both Iran and the US seem to be
very poorly informed of each other’s political developments due to the
two-decade long severance of diplomatic ties. Over these twenty years,
individuals and organizations have endeavored to serve as the sole authority to
bridge the Tehran-Washington gap by way of disseminating information and
mediating between the two sides. But their incompetence and lack of sound
information on Iran’s politics have robbed them of the chance to offer a
reliable analysis of Iranian developments to the Americans or to the expatriate
Iranians living in the US.
In the absence of other competent
sources and bodies, the White House and some Iranian politicians have deemed the
American-Iranian Council (AIC) as the only US-based organization fostering
Tehran-Washington rapprochement, thanks to Dr. Hooshang Amir Ahmadi.
Amir Ahmadi’s close contact with
American politicians has been used as a vehicle to lure the Iranian statesmen
into believing that he is the only person in the US who can assist the
betterment of Tehran-Washington ties.
This unique standing enabled Amir
Ahmadi to approach the Iranian conservatives during the final years of Hashemi
Rafsanjani’s presidency and to get an implicit green light from them to serve
as Iran’s unofficial representative in the process of US-Iran rapprochement.
Amir Ahmadi’s tendency toward the
Iranian conservatives stemmed from predictions verging on certainty that the
conservative candidate Nateq Nouri would win Iran’s 1997 presidential
elections. Amir Ahmadi thus put all his eggs in the conservatives’ basket.
Nateq Nouri’s unexpected defeat,
however, was such a shocker for Iran’s political circles that it kept the
Iranian conservatives in a prolonged state of confusion and also prompted Amir
Ahmadi to keep a low profile for some time.
But the realism associated with
politics gave this Rutgers University professor the chance to re-emerge after
this short span of time and strive to translate the AIC goals into action. This
time, however, Amir Ahmadi approached the Iranian reformists who had just come
to the helm.
Amir Ahmadi, who has always tried to
convince the Americans that he is a close associate and friend of the Iranian
government administrators and reformists, initially attempted to pose as a
reformist before the Iranians. To this end, in an interview with the
Washington-based Iranian and in other circles, he claimed to have mooted the
idea of "civil society" in Iran long before President Khatami ever set
it forth.
In his attempt to pose as a
reformist, Amir Ahmadi went so far to attribute the termination of the Iran-Iraq
war and acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 598 to himself, noting that
Iranian officials heeded his diplomatic views that benefited the country.
Amir Ahmadi’s new round of
political efforts in the US coincided with the right-wing Tehran-based Kayhan
daily’s publication of inane disclosures which, ironically, served to boost
his credibility and fame in the US.
Such coincidence granted Amir Ahmadi
the golden opportunity to use the right-wing paper’s disclosures to prove to
the American diplomatic circles that he was close to Khatami’s reformist camp
and was thus being criticized by the right-wingers.
Amir Ahmadi’s political efforts
over the three years of Khatami’s tenure reached an apex when he brought US
Secretary of State Madeline Albright to the AIC podium at a March 2000
Washington meeting to admit that the US administration was involved in the 1953
coup against Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq’s government and to implicitly apologize to
the Iranians.
Though a big success on first glance,
this move was very risky for Amir Ahmadi who had, through overt or covert
reasoning, convinced the US statesmen that this admission would facilitate
Iran-US rapprochement. After the speech was made, Amir Ahmadi faced the American
statesmen’s heightened demands and expectations for betterment of
Tehran-Washington relations.The US believed it was high time for Iran to take
the second step after Washington’s confession and apology and thus expected
Amir Ahmadi to prompt the Iranian authorities to take this step, given his
claims of closeness with Iranian officialdom.
Amir Ahmadi felt that Albright’s
speech was so moving and luring for Tehran that even in the worst case he would
reap huge benefit from it, the least of which would be recognition of his unique
role in Iran-US rapprochement.
Though Iran’s supreme leader
Ayatollah Khamenei immediately delivered a biting speech in reply to Albright,
Amir Ahmadi did not take the speech to signify the failure of his efforts.
From then on, Amir Ahmadi zoomed in
on the reformist camp. But contrary to his expectation, Amir Ahmadi was
cold-shouldered by both President Khatami and Parliament Speaker Mahdi Karrubi
during their separate visits to New York this summer for UN conferences. This
development disillusioned the Americans who realized that Amir Ahmadi could not
exert any influence on Iranian officials.
Amir Ahmadi felt that Iranian
authorities were so grateful to him for his successful attempt to get the US to
admit to orchestrating the 1953 coup that they would at least hold private
meetings with him and hear him out. Actually, Amir Ahmadi had always claimed in
private meetings that he was on friendly terms and in cordial association with
Iranian reformists, boasting to the Americans of his influence over Iranian
decision-makers.
The question currently at point is
whether Amir Ahmadi considers himself as an asset that has "gone with the
wind", now that he has lost his charm for the Americans? Perhaps he would
postpone any reply to this question to the near future, when the new US and
Iranian presidents take office and settle the question of Tehran-Washington
relations.
Amir Ahmadi’s success or defeat
will, nevertheless, have no impact on the Iranian government’s deprivation of
Iranian expatriates’ lobbying power in the US. The major question which the
Islamic Republic of Iran poses prior to stepping in the way of improved
relations with the US is whether it can cherish any hope on the Iranian
Americans as a powerful lobby?
* Dariush Sajjadi is a Political Analyst and Journalist Specializing in Iran and the Middle East
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