While some senior Bush administration officials have said Iran poses an equal or greater threat to the United States than Iraq did, they are unsure as to the best way to handle the situation, Knight Ridder News Service reported today (see GSN, May 16).

The unexpected success Iran has had in its nuclear efforts, combined with Tehran’s links to terrorism and other developments, have led to a consensus within the Bush administration that Iran is a major threat, a longtime Iran expert said.  Administration officials, however, “haven’t yet figured out what they’re going to do about it,” the expert said.

One major difficulty in dealing with Iran is the divided nature of its government, Bush administration officials said.  While Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and his supporters in the Iranian Parliament deny their country supports terrorism, the clerical regime that holds ultimate power in Tehran and the Revolutionary Guard continue to support terrorist groups, according to Knight Ridder.

“When we ask the Iranians we talk to about these activities, they say they don’t know anything about them,” a senior U.S. official said.  “The ones who do know about them are not the ones we talk to,” the official said.

The best approach for the United States to take with Iran is a policy of “managed tensions,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the U.S. Defense Department’s National Defense University.  Under such a policy, the United States would cooperate with Iran on issues of common interest, while opposing Tehran in other areas.

“Despite themselves, the administration has sort of stumbled onto this policy,” Takeyh said (Infield/Strobel, Knight Ridder/San Jose Mercury News, May 21).

Iran Denies Harboring Al-Qaeda

Meanwhile, the United States has been in contact with Iran over the alleged presence of al-Qaeda operatives in Iran, warning Tehran that it must do more against terrorism, U.S. officials said Monday.  There is evidence that al-Qaeda’s operations chief, Saif al-Adel, is currently in Iran and may have been involved in the recent set of bombings in Saudi Arabia, senior U.S. sources said (see GSN, May 15).

Iran yesterday denied such allegations.

“In case of confronting al-Qaeda, Iran will act according to its programs and within the U.N. framework, as it did in extraditing the operatives of the group to their countries of origin that in several cases included Western states,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said.  “Iran is ‘very serious’ in confronting al-Qaeda and the likes of the network,” he said (CNN.com, May 20).

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