Word: rafsanjani
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...subdued hope of movement surrounded the news last week that the U.S. had consented to repay $567 million in frozen Iranian assets. The agreement was reached after two days of negotiations between State Department legal adviser Abraham Sofaer and a senior adviser to Iran's President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The two met in the Hague, site of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal that was set up as part of the 1981 deal that freed the 62 American embassy hostages in Tehran. Both sides agreed that Iran will be paid most of the balance remaining in an account established...
...Iran's Rafsanjani is believed by Washington to be anxious to dispose of the hostage issue quickly so he can open his war-ravaged country to the outside world. But powerful hard-liners still want to block any contact with the West. Former Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashami, one of the most intransigent of the revolutionary mullahs, was excluded from Rafsanjani's government earlier this year. He can still get mobs out into the streets, however, as he proved by leading large anti-American demonstrations in Tehran earlier this month to mark the tenth anniversary of the seizure...
Events like that make the White House think Rafsanjani cannot yet deliver even if he wants to. "We're continuing behind the scenes to try to follow ; certain rabbit trails," the President said last week. "So far, they've ended up at dead ends." Earlier this month U.S. intelligence sources reported rumors that the hostages would be released on the anniversary of the embassy seizure. That hope also proved false. Now Americans must wait to see if the agreement in the Hague will amount to a further move in the hostage game, or just another dead...
...will the death of Ayatullah Khomeini and Hashemi Rafsanjani's election as President of Iran affect the Hizballah...
...major change in strategy, but there is a change in approach, caused by the phase that Iran is now entering. The previous phase was one of war and building the Revolution. The current phase is one of peace and rebuilding the country. The conditions put forward by Rafsanjani for restoring relations with the U.S. are the same ones he put forward during the life of the Imam ((Khomeini)). They are that America should stop its aggressive policy against Iran and that America can express that by releasing the frozen Iranian assets...