Diplomacy Just a Little Like Home

The death of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini earlier this month put pressure on Iran to make some kind of move to break out of the diplomatic isolation into which it had become sealed during his decade-long xenophobic rule. The main question was which direction Tehran would look in first. Last week Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful Speaker of Iran's parliament, provided the answer. Interrupting his observance of a 40-day period of national mourning for the late Imam, Rafsanjani arrived in Moscow to an elaborate reception. The visit was the beginning of a thaw between neighbors whose relations had been frosty for most of Khomeini's rule. Said Rafsanjani after his first day: "I already feel almost at home."

Though Mikhail Gorbachev initially seemed subdued in welcoming Rafsanjani in the St. George Hall of the Kremlin, the President was soon smiling and bantering with his guest, the highest Iranian official to visit Moscow since the days of the Shah. In two meetings, the two sides signed four agreements providing for, among other things, a new rail link between Soviet Turkmenistan and the northern Iranian city of Mashhad, which would help fulfill a longtime Moscow goal of greater access to the Persian Gulf. There were discussions, but no final accord, on reopening a gas pipeline from Iran to Soviet Transcaucasia, which was shut down in 1980. Moscow also announced that it would aid Iran in "strengthening ((its)) defense capability," but provided no details. The U.S. has made clear its opposition to large-scale shipments of Soviet arms to Iran; any such supplies would be viewed with even greater alarm by Iraq, which was backed by the Soviets during its eight-year war with Iran.

Gorbachev views the reconciliation as a way to gain Iran's restraint in exporting its brand of religious fundamentalism to the Soviet Union's Islamic republics. Rafsanjani said the two sides had agreed on a policy of noninterference in each other's affairs, but then implied that Moscow could do more for its Muslim population. Said he: "Mr. Gorbachev has a long way to go in terms of providing people freedoms." Nevertheless, Rafsanjani apparently liked what he saw: he added two stops to his itinerary -- Leningrad and Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, a republic on the doorstep of Iran with a large population of Shi'ite Muslims.