An Iranian Foreign Ministry official was quoted by government-controlled newspapers in Tehran on Thursday as saying that James Rubin, the chief spokesman for the State Department from 1997 to 2000, travelled to Iran recently to visit a relative of his wife, Iranian-born Christiane Amanpour, CNNs chief international correspondent.
The Iranian official noted that Rubin had entered Iran after receiving a visa and following legal procedures, adding that Rubin did not meet any Iranian official during his visit.
Both the announcement and the officials request for anonymity were unusual by Iranian standards. The Foreign Ministry official was in fact reacting to a report that had appeared earlier this week on Baztab, a Persian-language website that belongs to Mohsen Rezai, a former Revolutionary Guards commander with close ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Baztab has learnt the James Rubin came to Iran last week on a secret visit, the website reported on Tuesday. The Iranian authorities have not made any comments so far to confirm or deny this report and efforts to find out about Rubins meetings in Iran have come to no avail.
The website quoted the Tehran correspondent of Britains Sky News where Rubin is a regular commentator as saying that the former U.S. official visited Iran in the company of his wife and toured the cities of Tehran, Qom and Isfahan.
This was just a family visit; they didnt meet any officials, Siamak Zand, the Sky News correspondent, told the website Baztab.
Coming at a time of rising tensions between President George W. Bushs administration and Irans hardline-dominated government, the surprise visit has raised some eyebrows on both sides of the Atlantic.
This may have been just as innocuous as the Iranian government has portrayed it; an uneventful family visit, said Hassan Baradaran, a writer on Iranian affairs based in Paris. But if the Democrats wanted to send someone to Tehran just to test the waters, Rubin would have been the guy to pick.
Baradaran noted that from Tehrans perspective, Rubin had the right credentials; he was a senior foreign policy advisor to former President Bill Clinton and the national security adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Both Clinton and Kerry have been vociferous in their criticism of the Bush administrations Iran policy, advocating a more conciliatory approach to Tehran in search of a possible grand bargain.
Iran and how to deal with the growing crisis generated by Tehrans nuclear program, its role in Iraq and Lebanon and other flashpoints of the Middle East could be the most important foreign policy issue in the next presidential elections in the United States, Baradaran said. Iran is bound to be a big issue for any Democratic candidate in 08, and some might be tempted to pre-position themselves.
While the timing and the circumstances of Rubins visit to Tehran aroused much speculation among Iranians in Iran and abroad, experts warned against any comparison to the October Surprise conspiracy; an alleged plot that claimed representatives of the 1980 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign had conspired with the Islamic Republic of Iran to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Tehran until after the 1980 U.S. presidential election. The allegations were never proven.
