Summit Puts Iran Back on World Stage

TEHRAN — Iran rolls out the carpet--a $1-million Persian, naturally--today to welcome leaders of more than 50 Islamic nations to a summit that epitomizes both Tehran’s expanding role on the world stage and the failure of U.S. efforts to isolate the country.

This week’s Eighth Islamic Summit, the biggest international gathering ever held in Iran, shows just how far this country, ruled by revolutionary turbaned clerics, has come in repairing links with many U.S. friends in the region. Princes and emirs, sheiks and sultans, ministers and rulers will rub elbows at the meeting that begins Tuesday, including senior officials of Egypt, Jordan and every other Arab country considered a member of the region’s pro-American bloc.

About 30 heads of state and thousands of lesser officials are arriving for a three-day meeting that will be the international coming-out party for Iran’s new president, Mohammad Khatami, who has said the conference demonstrates “the power and stability of Iran.”

One foreign diplomat said: “Now the Iranians can say to the Americans and to the West: ‘Here we are. You wanted us isolated, but we are not isolated.’ ”

In May, Khatami, a moderate cleric, rolled to a stunning, decisive election victory over his conservative opponent. Khatami’s conciliatory moves to neighbors in the region since then have greased the way for a successful turnout.

Iran’s Arab neighbors have historically distrusted non-Arab Iran, and when the fiery Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini threatened to export his 1979 popular revolution, Arab Gulf rulers understood that their heads were meant to be the first to roll.

From Lebanon to Egypt to Algeria, Iran has been accused of fomenting and financing Islamic unrest against conservative regimes for nearly two decades. Only last year, Saudi officials privately identified Iran as the chief suspect in a truck bombing that killed 19 U.S. military personnel in Dhahran.

But recently, Iran has been trying to show a more benign face to its immediate neighbors even while it still regularly blasts the United States as “the Great Arrogance” and remains firmly opposed to accepting Israel’s place in the Middle East.

Arab leaders at the meeting want to see if Khatami has the oomph to carry out his moderate promises in the face of resistance from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a parliament dominated by the conservative candidate whom Khatami vanquished, Speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri.

As president, Khatami ranks only second or third in the country’s hierarchy of leaders, but his 20 million voters are a powerful potential engine for change.

The conference takes place at a time of considerable ferment in Iran. The passions just beneath the surface flared last month when thousands of young Iranians danced exuberantly in the streets, openly defying religious strictures, to celebrate Iran’s surprise success at securing a berth in soccer’s 1998 World Cup tournament.

A week earlier, one of the country’s senior sages had allowed his followers to circulate his doubts about Khamenei’s qualifications and style of leadership, setting off rioting in the seminary city of Qom.

One major question at this week’s conference is whether Iran will tone down its harsh anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric and accommodate moderate Arab countries in order to achieve Islamic unity on a host of resolutions facing the participants.

“I certainly hope so,” said one Saudi delegate who asked not to be identified. “I hope that Iranians will take this chance to modify their understanding of the world and live as part of it.”

The United States and Israel have long accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism and of actively pursuing nuclear arms, long-range missiles and other weapons of mass destruction. Since 1995, Iran has been under a U.S. trade embargo, but the Clinton administration has singularly failed to win support from its European partners to join Washington in imposing sanctions.

Any delegate who cares to stray from the lavish new conference hall to the boutiques and shops of downtown Tehran will find them filled with American consumer goods. And there will be no absence of countries friendly to the United States at the summit.

Crown Prince Abdullah, heir to the Saudi throne, heads the “A list” of dignitaries. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak--who has frequently hinted that Iran is behind the Islamic militants who have wreaked havoc in Egypt--will be a no-show, but his foreign minister, Amr Moussa, leads Egypt’s delegation.

It was not known if Moussa will have to travel on Islambouli Street, a major boulevard here named for one of the assassins of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat--vilified by Khomeini for being the first Arab leader to make peace with Israel.

In addition to members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a grouping of states with large Muslim populations that was founded in 1969, various Islamic movements, such as the Palestinian extremist group Hamas, are sending observers.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is also expected in Tehran as part of his latest world tour, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is lending his stature to the meeting.

The summit’s expected heavy turnout stands in embarrassing contrast to Washington’s inability to drum up attendance by Arab leaders at a U.S.-sponsored Middle East economic conference--also attended by Israel--in Qatar last month. That summit foundered over Arab anger at the breakdown in the Middle East peace process under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and resentment at the perceived unwillingness of the United States to do much about it.

Officials and delegates here have strived to play down comparisons between the two meetings and are denying that participation is meant as a snub to the United States. “This conference has not been convened to send a message to anyone. It was convened to bring about closer ties among Islamic countries,” said Mohammed Javad Zarif, Iran’s California-educated deputy foreign minister.

But while Khatami and his appointees stress a soothing message, there has been a triumphant tone ahead of the meeting in conservative newspapers, and billboards erected at several key intersections near the conference hall display the stern faces of Khomeini and Khamenei and declare in English, “Islam humiliates and downgrades the superpowers.”

Iran has spent a reported $80 million to host the event. The conference center, an enormous stainless-steel domed structure, was erected in a mind-boggling five months by a feverish anthill of 8,000 workers. Over the weekend, laborers were still finishing up the landscaping and had unrolled a 1-ton, cream-colored Persian carpet in the entrance hall that is the size of half a football field.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference organizes a summit every three years, making this year’s Tehran meeting only the eighth since 1969. Zarif, the deputy foreign minister, said this week’s gathering comes at a particularly sensitive time.

“The challenges facing the Islamic world are multifaceted,” Zarif said. “We are in a transition period, a period of Islamic revival. There is a resurgence of the Islamic identity in the world.”

Iran is portraying the event as a sign of the revolution’s maturity as it approaches its 19th anniversary. One Western diplomat here said, “The question is whether they can handle it both substantially and logistically in a way that reflects credit on the government.”