Reaching out

Hillary Clinton is now in Seoul on the third leg of her first overseas trip as US secretary of state. The fact that her first stops are Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China should give the world an indication of US foreign policy priorities under President Barack Obama.

Obama’s Asian fans are pleased, though certain people in the Philippines must be unhappy after prematurely announcing that Clinton might just drop by Manila during her Asian swing.

The US president himself is expected to embark shortly on his first foreign visits — to next-door neighbor Canada in a few days, and to staunch ally Britain in a few weeks.

Preoccupied as he is with economic problems, Obama will soon have to personally show what he means when he said he would reach out to the Muslim world — the one that his predecessor George W. Bush alienated with his obsessive focus on trying to keep America safe.

Clinton’s visit to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation and birthplace of the Southeast Asian terror cell Jemaah Islamiyah, could be a start of the promised rapprochement. Obama has also named a special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, who visited the two countries as well as India last week.

Among those elated over the departure of Bush and now awaiting Obama’s move is a member of Bush’s “axis of evil,” Iran.

“We are hopeful that relations will improve,” Iran’s ambassador to Manila, Ali Mojtaba Rouzbehani, said when he visited The STAR the other day.

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So far the Obama White House does not seem to have made up its mind yet on the wisdom of engaging Iran’s pugnacious President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Perhaps Obama prefers to wait for the outcome of the presidential election later this year, wherein Ahmadinejad is expected to face several challengers including former president Mohammad Khatami, who is seen as a reformist and a moderate in a land of ayatollah hardliners.

Ahmadinejad wants Israel “wiped off the map” and has publicly dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth.”

Worse for Bush, Ahmadinejad pushed ahead with the enrichment of uranium, fueling Bush’s worst nightmare — a nuclear-armed Iran, ready to annihilate Israel, attack US bases in the region, or else sell nuclear weapons to terrorists.

Rouzbehani, because of his job description, has a more diplomatic style. His government does not recognize the existence of either the state of Israel or a Jewish state — there are Jews all over the world, including in Iran, he said — but Tehran would go along with whatever the Palestinians decide regarding the conflict.

And Iran’s nukes? Rouzbehani wants to remind the world that the foundations for 10 nuclear power plants in Iran were laid down during the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi by… who else? Pahlavi’s buddies, the Americans.

But when the Iranian revolution, which Rouzbehani likens to our people power, ousted the Shah and ended the Iranian monarchy 30 years ago this month, the nuclear plants were abandoned. Then came eight years of war with Iraq, during which Saddam Hussein was backed by Washington.

Saddam at the time used chemical weapons to kill Iranians, apart from his country’s own Kurdish minority, Rouzbehani wants to remind the world.

When the war finally ended, Tehran tried to negotiate with France and Germany for technology to set up nuclear power plants. By then Iran was feeling the crippling effects of the embargo imposed by the US and its allies.

Eventually the Iranians turned to Russia, which agreed to provide the technology for uranium enrichment.

Tehran hopes to put on stream its first nuclear power plant within a year. It has allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency, of which Iran is a member, to inspect the power plant, to allay fears that what the country is developing is weapons-grade nuclear fuel.

But the Bush White House was unconvinced and kept demanding guarantees, which Rouzbehani said were never specified. Washington insisted that what Iran was developing could be used for military purposes. Earlier this month Iran launched its first satellite into space — a development viewed with suspicion by certain quarters in the US. “Even breathing may have military uses,” Rouzbehani sighed.

What guarantee could Iran give, not just to the US but to the world? Their religion — Shi’ite Islam — prohibits the use of weapons of mass destruction, Rouzbehani said: “That is the best guarantee.”

Iran has also suggested that the Middle East be declared a nuclear-free zone, but it was Washington that balked, Rouzbehani said, because it would mean making Israel give up its nukes.

Considering Jewish history, you can’t entirely blame the Israelis for wanting to maintain the most lethal arsenal for national survival. They can lose global sympathy from overkill, but that is the risk they take, and this is part of Obama’s problem.

If the White House under Obama is going to shift gears on Iran, Tehran will also have to tone down its rhetoric on Israel. Washington and Tehran may also have to redefine terrorism, as Iran is a great believer in the saying that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.

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Being demonized by Bush must have scared away Filipinos from Iran, Rouzbehani said.

There are only over a thousand Filipinos living in Iran, and 3,000 Iranian expatriates residing in the Philippines, a number of them married to Filipinas. In addition, there are about 2,000 Iranian students here.

There is no tourism to speak of between the two countries, which Rouzbehani sees as a shame. Iranians like to travel, he said, with Turkey a top destination. Iranians even visit the United States — their fight was with the Bush government and not ordinary Americans, Rouzbehani said. Last year, more than a million Iranian tourists visited Malaysia and Thailand, but no one went to the Philippines.

Rouzbehani is pushing tourism between the two countries and trying to arrange direct flights between Manila and Tehran.

The 47-year-old envoy, who has been here since last year, says his compatriots like the Philippines a lot. And if we visit his country, with its history dating back 7,000 years, he promised, we would like it, too.

It’s Iran with a smiling face, also reaching out to the world.