Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 25, 1990 TAG: 9003252162
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NORA BOUSTANY THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In the meantime, the United States, with the help of its Arab and Gulf friends, and the region's ubiquitous "middlemen," is following its own maze of diplomatic streets and alleys, seeking the release of the eight Americans still languishing in Lebanon. As Terry Anderson, the longest-held American hostage, began his sixth year in captivity earlier this month, the signals that Iran and the United States had lately been sending each other suggested that, despite continuing threats by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon to harm their American hostages, both governments may now be willing to find a way out of the hostage impasse.
"The outline of a deal has come into focus," said Martin Kramer, Israel's leading expert on Hezbollah, and currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. "The question is, what is Iran going to work out with the hostage holders and Syria? We are closer to the beginning of that process than to the end."
Kramer is referring to the complexities Iran will face in getting the hostages released by their captors in Lebanon. Iran will have to persuade its regional ally, Syria, to allow groups such as the pro-Iranian Hezbollah to operate freely within Lebanon. Syria's Lebanese proxy, the Amal militia, has been at war with the more militant Hezbollah since 1988 to keep it out of southern Lebanon.
Iran will also have to mediate between Lebanon's traditional power brokers and the web of fundamentalist groups that have made that troubled nation an extension of Tehran's foreign-policy operations.
The actual Lebanese captors of the foreign hostages, who fall into the various categories of greedy contractors, rabid ideologues or relatives of Shiite activists held prisoner in Kuwait, will not be easy to sway. "There will have to be a process of arduous persuasion by the Iranians. The captors will also maximize what the hostages will bring them. They realize they have an asset that is losing in value, but this is still not a fire sale," cautioned Kramer.
One source familiar with several governments involved described the outlines of a possible deal: "The idea is to first release three hostages, then to see whether certain conditions are met. Iran is eager to be removed from the terrorism list," the source explained, "to have the United States unfreeze its assets. . . . There is some intransigence, but Gulf countries such as Oman, Algeria and Syria are involved in the process."
Conditions Iran would like to see addressed include a final resolution of conflicting monetary claims between Iran and the United States, which date back to the shah's overthrow, and the more recent dispute over U.S. compensation for victims of the Iranian civilian airliner shot down by the USS Vincennes in 1988. It is unlikely that Iran has dropped any of its conditions, but it may be willing to reshuffle them and tell its allies in Lebanon that a hostage release is necessary.
According to Iranian and Lebanese fundamentalist sources, the captors are setting a number of conditions that would involve an exchange of some of the hostages for Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners now being held in Israeli jails. Among these would be clerical leader Abdel Karim Obeid, who was captured in southern Lebanon by Israeli commandos last summer.
The captors are also insisting that any deal not include Israeli soldiers taken prisoner in Lebanon since 1985, and that Israel refrain from building any settlements in northern Israel near its border with Lebanon. The captors fear that such settlements will be built to accommodate the expected influx of Soviet Jews into Israel, and that they will put added pressure on Lebanon's scarce water supply.
Furthermore, the captors are resisting releasing all of their hostages; they want to hold on to some of them as a guarantee against retaliation.
Though most U.S. officials cringe at the mention of the word "deal," specialists and diplomats agree that regardless of the scenario or sequence of goodwill gestures, Iran sanctioned kidnapping in Lebanon for a future trade-off.
"Iran always wanted something in return for the hostages. (Iranian President Hashemi) Rafsanjani is an opportunist, not a philanthropist. If he wants to secure the release of hostages, he wants to be paid in some form," one State Department official explained.
As one European diplomat in Washington specializing in Middle East and hostage affairs observed, "There is no free lunch in the Middle East."
Rafsanjani has a number of incentives for trying to make a deal for the hostages now rather than later. Rafsanjani may be coming to believe that the value of the American hostages is deteriorating, that they stand in the way of a much-needed rapprochement with the West.
Such a rapprochement has nothing to do with any shift in Iran's perception of the West and its values, but with the hard facts of Iran's crumbling economy. Iran's general assembly, the Majlis, often the setting for virulent tirades against Western and other countries, has approved foreign funding for an ambitious five-year development plan.
Furthermore, the revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe may soon deprive the Islamic Republic of its geostrategic importance.
There have been numerous signs of movement from Iran. A Feb. 27 editorial in the influential Tehran Times stated that: "The time has come for all the hostages to be freed unconditionally, because their continued detainment has resulted in widespread negative propaganda against the Islamic Republic." The newspaper recommended that Moslem fundamentalist forces in Lebanon release the foreign captives on humanitarian grounds.
After a trip to Tehran, Lebanon's leading Shiite spiritual leader, Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, further fueled hopes with an optimistic forecast the day after the editorial appeared. There were "practical factors indicating that the Western hostages in Lebanon will be freed," Fadlallah said. Usually in tune with current trends in Iranian thinking, and with the ripples in Tehran's power centers, Fadlallah added, "I can say that there is a general conviction, a favorable atmosphere, not abstract but based on tangible elements."
However, Ahmed Khomeini, the son of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, dampened some of the euphoria over Iran's change of heart by denying it was directly involved with hostage-taking, and saying that the United States was wasting its time in trying to open channels to Tehran. "The United States will never see the day when the Islamic Republic will reach a compromise with Washington."
In a call to his proteges in Lebanon for defiance, former Interior Minister and Hezbollah founder Ali Akbar Mohtashemi wrote an editorial in the hard-line Kayhan newspaper warning that "freedom for the hostages means breaking the chains of bloodthirsty wolves."
Iranian observers and analysts in Tehran discount the significance of Mohtashemi's views, noting that the broad principle of foreign funding has been approved despite the factional bickering.
"The question of relations with the United States is so bitterly controversial, but Rafsanjani has an eye on the future," one Iran specialist said.
President Bush has repeated his open message to Iran that "goodwill begets goodwill." He also tantalized reporters at a news conference with the suggestion that "When the whole story comes out on (the hostage process), you all are going to be very, very fascinated with the details." For now, U.S. counterterrorism teams appear to be no more than keen spectators, processing messages, communiques and declarations from Iran, Syria and Lebanon for final reports and recommendations to the secretary of state and the president.
"The United States and Iran could have a normal relationship," said one U.S. official closely monitoring the hostage crisis. "Our interests are not inimical or antagonistic to one another."
"It was old men hating old men, and young men suffering for it," said Noel Koch, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, in a critique of President Reagan's attitude of hanging tough on the hostages.
Koch argued in an interview that it would have been better to try to deal with the hostage issue during Ayatollah Khomeini's lifetime, "even if it meant eating a little crow in the process," rather than let him die in a state of implacable hostility toward the United States. The situation has proven difficult to resolve under Rafsanjani. SHIRT Nora Boustany covered Beirut for The Washington Post from 1979 until this year
by CNB