Iran Shuns Hostage Talks With U.S. : Spiritual Leader Khamenei Cites ‘Policy of Lies, Fraud’

DAMASCUS, Syria —  The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s new spiritual leader, Monday rejected hostage negotiations with the United States so long as Washington maintains its support of Israel and continues what he called a policy of “lies, fraud and mischief.”

The hard-line statement, reported by Tehran Radio, appeared to reverse a potentially accommodating signal put out by Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani 10 days ago.

In Washington, White House and State Department spokesmen had no immediate comment on Khamenei’s remarks, although one State Department official attributed them to the continuing political struggle between Iranian moderates and hard-liners.

“As long as U.S. policy is based on lies, fraud and mischief, as long as it supports a sinister regime like Israel and oppresses weak nations . . . ,” Khamenei was quoted as saying, “there is no possibility of negotiations or relations with the U.S. government. No one from the Islamic Republic has negotiated with you, and no one will.”

Sponsors Hezbollah

Iran, sponsor of Lebanon’s fundamentalist Hezbollah movement, whose various factions are believed to hold 14 Western hostages, including eight Americans, is regarded as key to the hostage crisis that erupted more than two weeks ago.

Khamenei has supported the centrist Rafsanjani in his assumption of political powers once held by Iran’s late supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but the hostage crisis has loosed a resurgence of Islamic radicals in Iran, led by Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, who was instrumental in founding the extremist Hezbollah movement in Lebanon when he was ambassador to Syria in the early 1980s.

The reversal by Khamenei, who inherited Khomeini’s spiritual leadership, indicates the depth of the power struggle in Iran, and some Washington analysts Monday theorized that Khamenei’s remarks were for domestic consumption.

Pendulum Swings Back

“It is the revolutionary pendulum swinging back again,” the State Department official, a counterterrorism specialist, told a Times reporter in Washington. “All of them have to keep their backsides covered.

“We’re not going to comment on everything that comes out. It’s difficult to say what it means. It may be that they’re playing good cop, bad cop. Last week, Rafsanjani and the Tehran Times were encouraging, and then this comes along.”

After Rafsanjani spoke of offering help, conditionally, on resolving the hostage crisis, the Tehran newspaper, a strong supporter of the new president, suggested that a positive climate was developing and floated a proposal that U.S. release of impounded Iranian assets might help cement a deal.

The hostage crisis was triggered by the Israeli abduction of Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a Hezbollah leader in southern Lebanon, on July 28.

Three days later, a Hezbollah faction, the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, announced that it had executed an American hostage, Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, in retaliation. The Bush Administration responded by dispatching U.S. warships to waters off Lebanon and Iran.

A second hostage, Joseph J. Cicippio, was targeted for execution by another Hezbollah group if Obeid was not released by the Israelis. But his sentence was subsequently suspended, and reports indicated that Hezbollah, under heavy international pressure, was prepared to negotiate some sort of prisoner swap, including the hostages.

Monday afternoon, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati arrived in Damascus for discussions with Syrian officials, a visit seen by some analysts as related to the hostage crisis, since the Syrian military holds sway over most of Lebanon.

But Velayati turned aside the reports when he arrived at Damascus airport. “Our talks will not be in any way related to the hostages,” he told reporters. “The issue does not concern us.” Monday evening, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh, who met later with the visiting Iranian diplomat, said tersely, “We will talk about everything that concerns our two countries.”

Syria supported Iran in its eight-year war with Iraq and now must contend with Iraqi support for the Christian forces opposed to the Syrian presence in Lebanon.

Khamenei Vacillates

Like Rafsanjani, a moderate who occasionally took on hard-line causes in his maneuverings to consolidate political power last spring, Khamenei has swung from centrist to radical positions before.

Both men have indicated the need to improve relations with Western powers to rebuild Iran’s war-devastated economy, and Khamenei had the temerity to suggest while Khomeini, founder of the Islamic revolution, was still alive that the aged leader’s death sentence against Muslim-born novelist Salman Rushdie for alleged blasphemy might be rescinded if Rushdie apologized.

In his remarks reported by Tehran Radio on Monday, Khamenei raised the flag of anti-Americanism by reviving Iranian outrage over the downing of an Iran Air jetliner last year by an American missile cruiser during the Persian Gulf War.

Williams, The Times’ bureau chief in Nicosia, Cyprus, is on assignment in Damascus. Times staff writers Robin Wright and David Lauter, in Washington, contributed to this story.