WASHINGTON — The administration now distinguishes between Iran and the other countries that President Bush lumped together last year in an "axis of evil" and does not plan to target the Islamic Republic after the increasingly likely war in Iraq, a senior U.S. official said.
Despite growing concern about the regime's suspected nuclear weapons program, Iran's assistance in the war on terrorism, and the gradual evolution of liberal thought there puts it in a different category from Iraq or North Korea, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said in an interview. "The axis of evil was a valid comment, [but] I would note there's one dramatic difference between Iran and the other two axes of evil, and that would be its democracy. [And] you approach a democracy differently," Armitage said. "I wouldn't think they were next at all," he added.
Over the past 14 months, despite ongoing tensions and sometimes heated public rhetoric, U.S. and Iranian officials have held quiet discussions about a growing list of overlapping interests, American officials confirmed. The discussions, first on Afghanistan and now on Iraq, were often at international meetings, although informal contacts also have taken place, the sources said.
Iran shares a long border with Iraq, and it has long hosted Iraqi opposition groups now supported by the United States.
During four earlier administrations, Washington and Tehran have tried public and back-channel overtures that all failed to develop. But the deepening U.S. involvement on all of Iran's borders -- in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Central Asia, along the Persian Gulf and now in Turkey and Iraq -- has nudged the two countries into increasingly frequent discussions since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to U.S. officials.
The discussions, they add, don't mark the onset of a formal dialogue or a diplomatic thaw five years after Iranian President Mohammad Khatami proposed bringing down the "wall of mistrust" that has characterized relations since the 1979-81 hostage drama in which 52 Americans were held for 444 days.
In his State of the Union address this year, Bush said Tehran's religious regime "represses its people, pursues weapons of mass destruction and supports terror."
Yet the contacts have been tentatively encouraging, the sources added.
