Tehran Sends Mixed Messages

By Azadeh Moaveni/Tehran

Twenty-two years to the day after radical students stormed the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days, the embassy, which since then has been used as a high school for children of the Revolutionary Guards, was opened to the public for the first time. Iran is also commemorating the anniversary with an exhibit dedicated to "America's crimes around the world"--featuring crude and macabre displays, from devil-horned effigies of Uncle Sam to a Statue of Liberty with a live dove behind bars in its stomach. It would seem Iran is still as furiously anti-U.S. as it was in 1979. Such propaganda hardly fits with recent signals of improved cooperation prompted by the Afghan war, but it is in keeping with a pattern. Whenever relations have become too cozy in the past, Iran's hard-liners step up their anti-American rhetoric. But this time many high-ranking officials, including some former hostage takers, refused to endorse the embassy exhibit. And even amid the archaic, almost risible propaganda, there was a clear dictate freshly painted on a mural in the exhibit: "Iran's policy is that relations and negotiations with America are at the Supreme Leader's discretion."

--By Azadeh Moaveni/Tehran