WASHINGTON - For 444 days Iran's revolutionary students held America hostage, keeping U.S. citizens imprisoned in the embassy, demeaning the U.S. flag, belittling then President Jimmy Carter.
It's starting all over again. Revolution-bent students, dueling mullahs, a suspected drive to attain nuclear weapons, widespread resentment and a new wave of anti-Americanism are turning Iran into a cauldron spewing forth poison that will result in the next major foreign policy crisis for the Bush administration.
President Bush branded the Islamic Republic of Iran part of the "axis of evil" but he really wanted Iran to be quiescent and not give him more trouble -- a forlorn hope.
As a fractured society, riven by various ologies and factions, Iran is more dangerous than ever to U.S. interests. For once, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are united in agreeing this is serious cause for worry. The White House, battening down the hatches for the president's re-election campaign, hasn't yet figured out how to handle this latest mess but is trying to pass out warnings without actually delivering ultimatums.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says it is concerned that Iran has or is building a uranium enrichment plant, a uranium processing facility, research reactors, a heavy-water facility and a light water reactor. Can bomb-grade plutonium be far behind? While Iran has been cagily staying just within the letter of international law, the question is being asked -- will Iran pull out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty?
China, North Korea, Russia and Pakistan all are being eyed with suspicion for helping Iran with its nuclear program. Will Bush feel compelled to impose what the administration calls the "logic of adverse consequences" against countries that help Iran? Is more war likely?
Not anytime soon, with U.S. troops still fighting in Iraq and trying to nation-build in Afghanistan and Bosnia. Weary of false on-again, off-again overtures from seemingly reform-minded ayatollahs in Iran, the Bush administration is not disposed to act precipitously to avoid making a bad judgment call, even as anti-government agitators set themselves on fire in Paris and elsewhere to gain attention. Depending on one's point of view, Iranian dissidents are either terrorists or freedom fighters. But in just a matter of weeks, America has gone from using them to help keep Iran out of the war with Iraq to shunning them as untrustworthy.
Bush warns that the United States -- and its allies -- will not tolerate Iran's becoming a nuclear power, even as he works behind the scenes to try to make certain that this time the ever-ambivalent allies are fully on board. The IAEA's new statement of concern about Iran's evasions about its nuclear program and the agency's proposal for stiffer inspections weren't as strong a condemnation as the United States sought. Iran insists its program is peaceful, which nobody believes -- it has huge oil and gas reserves.
Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman and foreign policy expert who is now director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, warns that Iran is "a very powerful actor" in a dangerous region and as a restless society on the "verge of change" could become either a stabilizing or destabilizing force.
While the threat of a nuclear Iran is "extremely worrisome" to Hamilton, he thinks the United States won't be the prime mover in what happens in Iran and notes that there have for years been deep divisions in the United States on what to do about Iran.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the senior Democratic woman in Congress who represents a high number of Muslims in Ohio -- 98 percent of Iranians are Shiite Muslims -- insists that the United States must start doing more to make friends in a dicey part of the world. Speaking of Iran, she said, "Iran is very unsettled. To publicly antagonize [the country] does not get us anywhere. Whatever we do should increase stability, not inflame tensions. Reform takes time. I think we should be involved in evolutionary change instead of revolutionary change."
There are signs that this might become the U.S. strategy although Bush is warning Tehran to treat protesters "with the utmost of respect." One encouraging development is that, for a change, Europe and the United States are trying to work together to send the same message to Iran that if it wants to stop being a pariah, it must not develop nuclear weapons.
And unlike Iraq, where military force was opposed from the beginning, this time, regarding Iran, the European Union is saying, under its breath, "or else."
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