By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 2009 (IPS)

Almost exactly 30 years ago the U.S.-backed dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, fled his country, never to return. Shortly after his departure and the subsequent collapse of the monarchy, the Islamic Republic of Iran was born.

On Monday, a prominent Iranian human rights lawyer – often at odds with her own government, though not opposed to its essence – visited Washington to discuss the situation in Iran today, difficult relations between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic and steps towards alleviating resulting tensions built up in the intervening three decades of hostility.

"Things were bad…then [in Iran]," said Shirin Ebadi of the era of the Shah, noting that the situation had changed, but not always for the better. "Now they're bad and different."

A human rights activist and 2003 Nobel winner, Ebadi called for broad-based engagement between Iran and the U.S. She emphasised dialogue between non-government actors such as ordinary people and members of civil society.

"There is a history of friendship between Iranian people and American people," Ebadi said through a translator at a packed conference room at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"When I speak of dialogue between the civil societies by the countries," she said, "I'm talking about getting some understanding of the people."

Because of her focus on people, Ebadi rejects sanctions, which she says hurt the citizens of Iran, as well as the use of military force or even the threat of it. She said that demanding rights for people can only be done in a "period of peace".

U.S. President Barack Obama campaigned heavily on his desire to meaningfully engage Iran to address a range of issues, eschewing the more hawkish positions that include the threat of military force proffered by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Those in the U.S. pushing for sanctions and military action in Iran are usually focused on the nuclear issue: Iran's enrichment of uranium, which it claims is for purposes of peaceful nuclear energy but which critics deride as a front for the production of nuclear weapons.

"[Talks] shouldn't focus on the nuclear issues," said Ebadi, "but on the progress of human rights. Negotiations should focus on the people of the countries."

Obama has yet to unveil an exact plan, but had said during the campaign that he would be willing to engage in diplomacy without preconditions and that he would be willing to take "regime change", reportedly a consistent unofficial policy of the Bush administration, off the table if the Iranians made constructive change to their "behaviour".

However, some close observers of Iran issues are concerned about the potential 'Iran envoy' appointment of Dennis Ross, a former U.S. lead negotiator in the failed efforts for peace between Israelis and Palestinians under both Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush.

Ross's focus with regards to Iran appears to be limited to co-founding and co-chairing a campaign called United Against a Nuclear Iran and as a task force member of and signatory to a neoconservative-drafted report called "Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy toward Iranian Nuclear Development".

The report, which was released by the Bipartisan Policy Council in September, also calls for preconditions, of a sort, for talks with Iran by insisting that negotiations result in no nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil.

Though Ebadi did not discuss the nuclear issue in detail, she was clear about U.S. preconditions for negotiations: "In order to resolve the problem, I have always talked about dialogue with no preconditions."

The organisation Ebadi heads, the Centre for the Defence of Human Rights, had its offices shut down and files seized by authorities in late December under the pretense of a tax evasion investigation.

"The office may be closed down," Ebadi said in Washington, "but we continue our activities."

In early January, demonstrators gathered around Ebadi's home. The protesters, one of whom told Iranian press he was a member of the Basij, a paramilitary group connected to the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), shouted slogans and vandalised Ebadi's home. One of the vandals spray-painted slogans in Farsi that read, "Shirin Ebadi is American".

The closure of the centre and the demonstrations – about which Ebadi called the police, later telling reporters they simply looked on – were condemned at the time by Human Rights Watch.

During today's briefing, Ebadi was asked if she intended to return to Iran with the ongoing government crackdown or take refuge in the West for a period.

"I am an Iranian," she responded. "I was born in Iran. I live in Iran. And I will die in Iran. After I finish my speaking tour in America, I will head home right away."

The slogans chanted against Ebadi and spray-painted on her home are emblematic of the tense relationship between the two countries and, particularly, Tehran's sensitivity to U.S. support for human rights and democracy activists in Iran.

Women's rights activist Sussan Tahmasebi told IPS early last month that Bush administration calls for "regime change" had created an excuse for the government to crack down on rights activists.

But Ebadi was careful to say that the international community should not hesitate to constructively criticise the human rights record of the Islamic Republic.

"On the same basis that the government of Iran can speak about violations human rights in Palestine," she said, "other governments can talk about human rights in Iran."

In mid-December, having notified both the Obama transition team and the then-outgoing Bush administration, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, tried to set up a meeting with a senior aid to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, but was snubbed at the last minute. The incident, reported Monday in the Wall Street Journal, demonstrates the touchy nature of beginning talks after 30 years of cool relations.

However, the Washington Times reported that at the same time Ebadi was speaking at the Carnegie Endowment, another sort of outreach was occurring. The U.S. State Department announced that a U.S. women's badminton team will go to Iran to participate in a tournament there.

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