As sanctions loom, is Tehran sending peace signals to the US?

Istanbul: Iran's triumphant anti-American rhetoric may have hardly changed.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei declared on Monday that countries around the world "thirst" for Iran's message of "values, humanity and deliverance of nations from the grip of domineering powers."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently announced, "Iran is the world's most powerful country, and they [Western powers] themselves admit this." He routinely proclaims that the US, West, and its capitalist ways have "collapsed."

But behind the usual high-pitched pokes from Tehran, analysts say several Iranian actions signal a serious desire to resolve the nuclear standoff — and perhaps even to find a limited rapprochement with arch-enemy America.

The Iranian olive branches they cite:

Are those Iranian signals real? And is the United States listening?

Amid the current US push for more UN sanctions, Washington may not perceive these as significant efforts by Iran.

"Here they hope the US would take [Iran's] actions more seriously than words," says a political analyst in Tehran who asked not be named for security reasons. Iran's hard-line leadership "may try to pacify this potentially destructive enemy [the US], so that they [Iran's leaders] feel reassured about their future."

Tehran's leaders are not just concerned about sanctions. On Monday, the New York Times reported that Gen David Petraeus last September ordered a "broad expansion of clandestine military activity" in the Middle East that "appears to authorise specific operations in Iran." And the Iranians haven't forgotten that President George Bush, whose officials routinely spoke of "regime change" in Iran, authorised $400 million in secret funding to weaken the Islamic Republic.

"Once and for all, they [Iran's leaders] want to do away with this existential threat," says the Tehran analyst. "When you have an enemy which you just can't ignore, what are you supposed to do? Are you going to take it on in a suicide attack? Or try to appease it, and make it friendly in a face-saving way?"

As viewed from Tehran, positive Iranian steps in recent weeks include Iran's decision to embrace a nuclear fuel swap deal — a plan to export 1,200 kg of Iran's homemade low-enriched uranium. Iran rejected a similar plan last October, when it was backed by the US and the UN, but accepted it last week after intense mediation with Turkey and Brazil.

But Washington's "answer," as described by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was that the permanent five UN Security Council members had agreed on "strong" sanctions package against Iran.

Another positive step toward the US was Iran's "humanitarian" decision to give visas to the mothers of three Americans imprisoned in Tehran, who visited earlier this week. The American families and US officials say the three are innocent hikers who strayed across the border from Iraq; Iran's intelligence chief calls them spies that can be exchanged for several Iranians in American custody.

Also on the list of steps that Iran sees as positive: Ahmadinejad's presence in New York at the opening of the NPT conference earlier this month. Though he accused the US of being a global "nuclear criminal," he also spoke well of Americans. During an ABC-TV interview, he wished the audience "a life filled with health, and joy." He said: "We're also friends of the American people."

US officials did not hide their unhappiness with Ahmadinejad's last-minute decision to take part. But Tehran's view was that the president "rushing to the States every now and then giving an olive branch to the American people" should have been welcome, says the analyst.