Two weeks ago, a senior European diplomat arrived in Washington with a message from the Iranian government. The Iranians saw a parallel between the case of captive American journalist Roxana Saberi and that of three Iranian diplomats held by the U.S. military in Iraq. The Iranians were not demanding an exchange of prisoners, the European envoy told TIME, but were setting up a more subtle test of the Obama Administration's intentions. Now that Saberi has been released, Tehran will be watching the U.S. reaction for signs of a reciprocal goodwill gesture.
In public, the U.S. rejects any comparison between the two cases. While Saberi is a journalist who was jailed in the course of her professional work, Washington says the three Iranian diplomats, arrested in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil in January 2007, are in fact members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees Tehran's ties with militant groups elsewhere in the Middle East. Following Saberi's release on Monday, the U.S. State Department said hers was a humanitarian issue rather than a diplomatic one, and that there was no deal linking it with the detained Iranians. "There was no quid pro quo," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood. (See pictures of the contemporary face of Iran.)
Still, the Iranian back-channel message came at an important moment in U.S.-Iranian relations. Washington is pursuing a new policy of engagement with Iran and has tried to reassure the mullahs that its diplomatic overtures are sincere. It is trying to strengthen the hand of Iranian moderates who want to pursue diplomacy and undermine hard-liners who want to maintain hostile relations with the West. The Saberi case offered an opportunity to do both. (Read "Talking to Iran — or Talking War?")
Saberi's detention had the hallmarks of a diplomatic cat-and-mouse game from the start. Iran watchers viewed it as a play by Iranian hard-liners to insert themselves into the debate over diplomatic engagement, giving anti-détente forces a tool to retard diplomatic progress because the U.S. would have to limit its engagement with Tehran as long as Saberi was held captive. "They can use her to sabotage any opening," said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution. (See pictures of the health-care system in Tehran.)
Saberi's release is seen by the Administration as a victory for Iranian pragmatists over hard-liners — and the U.S. may find a benefit in reciprocating. Releasing the detained Iranians could build trust for talks between Washington and Tehran on security issues in Afghanistan and Iraq and also on the thorny issue of Iran's nuclear program. And it could strengthen the hand of the Iranian pragmatists who sent the signal through the European diplomatic channel.
On the downside, however, the Arbil three are, in the Pentagon's eyes, hardened Iranian agents dedicated to undermining stability in Iraq. Washington believes the Revolutionary Guard remains an active sponsor of militant and terrorist groups throughout the region. And the U.S. is wary of establishing a precedent of seeking the release of detained civilians by freeing government operatives held for involvement in espionage or other covert activities.
Still, a different pretext could be found for releasing the detained Iranians. The U.S. is trying to hand over to Iraqi authorities all 15,000 or so detainees currently held by the U.S. in Iraq, and that would include the three Iranians (whose detention was publicly condemned by Iraqi authorities). "We're in the process of working with the Iraqis on how to transfer the Iranians and all detainees to Iraqi custody," said Geoff Morrell, spokesman for the Defense Department. If that happens, it's a safe bet they'll be freed.
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