Quake aid may open door for US and Iran

"The Greeks hate the Turks and they feared us, and suddenly they said, 'Look, the Turks are coming to help us.' But they bought it only because the Greeks were ready to shake hands with the Turks" at an official level, he says.

Washington has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979, when students occupied the US Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for a 444 days. The deposition of the US-backed Shah and the ascendancy of an Islamic theocracy in his place put Washington and Tehran at odds with each other for nearly 25 years.

But analysts note that there's a small but emerging détente of late, a spin-off from the US-led war in Iraq. Iran's decision to recognize the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council indicated a certain acquiescence to Washington's plans in Iraq. This tacit agreement with US policy in Iraq stems in part from Iran's perception that Washington shows no signs of opposing Shiite predominance in Iraq, a country that has long been ruled by its Sunni minority. Iran, the only other majority Shiite country, has become more influential in postwar Iraq and sees a pro-Iranian government there as a key to regional stability.

Concurrent with Washington and Tehran's discovery of mutual interests in Iraq, Iran has also showed its willingness to comply with demands to inspect its nuclear program. That appears to be a sign that it has no interest in upping the ante with Washington nor with Israel, the country which feels most threatened by - and would be mostly likely to launch an attack on - Iran's nuclear capabilities, notes a recent report by Stratfor, a Washington-based research service.

Though many informal channels between Iran and the US are active, official ones have not been until now. In a rare conversation, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations, Mohammad Javad Zarif, spoke by phone about Washington's offer for aid, Reuters reported.

After Iran's 1990 earthquake, which claimed 36,000 lives, Tehran was slow to accept offers of international aid. It vacillated on admitting it needed help before eventually accepting assistance from adversaries such as the US and Iraq. Iranian authorities suffered domestic criticism for not throwing open their doors sooner.

In July of 2002, the US indirectly sent some $300,000 in aid to Iran through the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, following a smaller earthquake.

While the latest aid is appreciated, Shirzad Bozorghmehr, the deputy editor in chief of Iran News, an English-language daily in Tehran, says it would be "pure conjecture" to assume that this will turn a page in US-Iranian relations.

"These are such extreme emergency situations and I don't think politics comes into it," he says. "I don't think the US had a political motive in offering help or that Iran had a political incentive in taking this. Right now the politicians here are so preoccupied with the magnitude of the suffering."

"In short, it is a positive move on the side of the US," he says. "A gesture had been made and a gesture has been accepted."

Since the 6.6-magnitude quake on Friday, Iranian officials say that some 13,000 bodies have been recovered - and another 100,000 people are estimated to be homeless. Around 70 percent of the buildings in Bam, a city about 600 miles southeast of the capital Tehran, were flattened.

• Mike Theodoulou in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.

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