Tens of thousands of people packed a sports stadium in Beirut for a rally honoring Khatami May 13. The stands were a sea of waving flags—especially those of Lebanon, Iran, and Palestine—as Khatami called for an end to the U.S. occupation in Iraq and stressed his government’s support for the fight to end the Israeli occupation of Arab lands. “We have noticed that the American pressure has increased on Syria and Lebanon,” Khatami said. He called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and warned the American administration “not to create a crisis in the region following that of Iraq.”

After his three-day stop in Lebanon, Khatami traveled to Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain. It is the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution that Iran’s president has visited Lebanon. The stop in Damascus was added to Khatami’s itinerary shortly before the trip, as U.S. threats against both Syria and Iran escalated.

In Lebanon, Khatami met with President Emile Lahoud and addressed the country’s parliament. He also met with leaders of various organizations, including Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of the Lebanese organization Hezbollah, or Party of God. Nasrallah sat with Khatami at the May 13 rally and Hezbollah militants helped organize security at the event.

Earlier in the month, during a trip to Lebanon and Syria, U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell had reiterated Washington’s demand that Hezbollah be disarmed (See Washington presses Damascus and Beirut to help crack down on Palestinian fighters). The U.S. government claims that Hezbollah, which played a central role in forcing Israeli troops to end their 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon three years ago, is a terrorist group.

The Lebanese people have a “natural right and a national duty” to resist the occupation of their land by Israel, the Iranian president told reporters while in Beirut. “We have friendly ties with Syria and Lebanon, but we do not mean to interfere in those countries’ internal affairs…. Hezbollah is considered as part of the Lebanese defensive forces,” he added, in response to Powell’s demands.  
 
U.S. threats over nuclear plans
A week earlier, U.S. government officials took new steps to press their campaign for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to declare Iran in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf met with IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei May 7 to press him to issue a report that meets with Washington’s approval by June 16. ElBaradei, who has overseen IAEA inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, has said Tehran is cooperating with the UN agency and that he is still studying the facts.

More than a year ago, U.S. president George Bush declared the governments of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea to be an “axis of evil.” With U.S. troops now occupying Baghdad, Washington is turning more attention to preparing the justifications for possible military action against Tehran and Pyongyang. Both are long-term targets of Washington because of revolutions that in each case dealt blows to U.S. imperialist interests. On May 5, Wolf told diplomats in Geneva, “Despite professions of transparency and peaceful intent, Iran is going down the same path of denial and deception that handicapped international inspections in North Korea and Iraq.”

The U.S. accusations against Iran center around the construction of a nuclear power plant at Bushire and facilities for enriching uranium fuel at Arak and Natanz. Iranian officials insist that the reactors and facilities to produce nuclear fuel are intended simply to meet the rapidly growing energy needs in Iran, which has a population of 65 million. Responding to Washington’s claim that its large oil and gas reserves should make nuclear power unnecessary, Iran’s nuclear energy chief, Gholamreza Aqazadeh, told UN officials that Iran “cannot merely depend on fossil fuels.... If the status quo is maintained in using energy components, Iran will turn into one of the importers of crude oil and its products in the upcoming decades.” He pointed to the high cost of processing oil for consumption, and also to the environmental effects of the expanded use of fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide, sulfur, and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

Aqazadeh noted that because of pressure from Washington, Iran has been denied access to importing from Europe the 100 tons of enriched uranium and 390 tons of depleted uranium needed to bring the Bushire plant on line. In this respect, he said, it is the IAEA that has failed to meet its commitments to Iran under the nonproliferation treaty.

Construction of Iran’s nuclear plant was started in 1975 by the German company Siemens. After the 1979 revolution, in which working people in Iran mobilized in massive numbers and toppled the U.S.-backed monarchy, Washington spearheaded an international campaign to isolate Tehran. At that point Siemens pulled out of the Bushire project. Work on the plant resumed only in 1995, under an $800 million agreement between the governments of Iran and Russia. The first reactor is scheduled to begin operation next year.

On May 6 Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Losyukov denied U.S. charges that the Russian-supplied technology was being used by Iran to develop nuclear weapons. “Very sound evidence is needed to accuse anyone,” he told the Interfax news agency. “So far, neither the United States nor any other countries can present it.”

In Washington, however, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher claimed that the evidence collected by the IAEA pointed to a program for developing nuclear weapons. “Despite their protests, despite their claims, Iran is developing a full-scale nuclear program that it would not behoove anybody to co-operate with,” Boucher said. “Iran’s nuclear ambitions are much bigger than many had hoped.”

Aqazadeh told the IAEA May 7 that his country’s nuclear program was “only for peaceful purposes.” At the same time, he turned down the UN agency’s request for more intrusive inspections of its facilities.  
 
Tehran seeks to broaden ties
In face of the growing pressures from Washington, and the impact of the world economic depression, the Iranian government has increased its attempts to broaden both political and economic ties throughout the Middle East and beyond. Khatami’s regional trip is just one example. On May 13, officials of Iran and Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of understanding to expand Saudi investment in Iran’s Kish Island free-trade zone.

The same day the Indian government concluded a major agreement to import liquid natural gas from Iran over the next 25 years, and reinforced an existing contract for the Indian Oil Company to import a minimum of 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Iran. “It is a major development in Indo-Iranian relations,” Indian oil minister Ram Naik told the Tehran Times. “We will both benefit from it.” Indian and Iranian officials are also discussing the possibility of building a gas pipeline to run more than 1,000 miles between the two countries.

Tehran is seeking to expand ties with Washington’s imperialist competitors. This month, for instance, Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi traveled to Rome to meet with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The Iran News reported that Berlusconi said he would seek stronger ties between Iran and the European Union.

An opinion column in the May 14 Tehran Times was headlined, “Europe needs developing countries to counterbalance U.S. pressures.” The unsigned column pointed to a just-concluded visit to Tehran by Francois Loos, the French minister of state for foreign trade, as a step forward. It noted that “due to its opposition to the U.S. military campaign in Iraq, it seems that France may miss some economic opportunities in Iraq’s future,” and urged Paris to deepen investment in Iran instead. “Considering that the Islamic Republic has revised its economic laws on foreign investment and eased regulations, it now provides new opportunities for the long-term foreign investments. The door is wide open to European investment companies due to the absence of their American rivals. Nevertheless, France stands after Italy, Germany, and the UAE [United Arab Emirates] in terms of economic cooperation with Iran.”

As Washington stepped up its campaign to brand Tehran a “nuclear threat,” French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, who was visiting Iran the first week of May, said there was progress on the issue, distancing his government from the White House on the matter.

At the same time both President Khatami, who represents the “reformist” faction of the Islamic Republic, and foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi, part of the “conservative” faction, denied reports that recent closed-door talks between U.S. and Iranian officials have included negotiations toward reestablishing diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington.  
 
 
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