Iran may have struck a more cooperative tone over the al-Qaeda suspects in its custody in return for France cracking down on exiled opposition groups, Tehran newspapers reported this week.
Political analysts speculated that it was more than a coincidence that Iranian authorities were divulging details about the al-Qaeda suspects only days after France arrested more than 100 members of a resistance group opposed to Tehran.
French police last week raided the headquarters of the People’s Mojahedin, although Iran’s demands for a crackdown against the group had fallen on deaf ears in the past.
”Why did the French really detain the leadership?” the daily Iran News asked. The paper wrote that France might be trying ”to put pressure on Tehran to return the alleged al-Qaeda operatives believed to be in Iran because, up to now, the Iranian side has always complained about a double standard on the terrorism issue”.
On Monday Tehran would not confirm or deny that it was holding al-Qaeda spokesperson Suleiman Abu Ghaith or the network’s security chief, Said al-Adil.
”We have identified some of the al-Qaeda members in our custody,” a government spokesperson, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, said. ”Their names cannot be given for security reasons.”
Speculation of some kind of quid pro quo between the two governments forced the Foreign Ministry to issue a denial that any deal had been struck.
”There has not been any negotiations or behind-the-scenes deal between Iran and France,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hamid Reza Asefi. ”France acted according to its international responsibilities and within the framework of the European Union, which considers this group to be a terrorist group.”
The status of the People’s Mojahedin, a group that combines Marxism and Islam, has come up in discussions between Iran and the United States in recent months, analysts believe.
Meanwhile, support in the US for a tougher stance against Iran is appearing to grow. More than half of Americans favour a war against Iran to prevent the development of nuclear weapons, according to a poll published on Tuesday. One in four Americans believes — incorrectly — that Iraq used chemical or biological weapons in the recent war.
The poll also shows a growing concern about the deaths of Americans in Iraq. About half find the rate of deaths ”acceptable”, compared with two-thirds in April. While Republicans find the casualty figures acceptable, there has been a large drop in this view among Democrats and independents, with only 35% of them now finding the rate of deaths acceptable. — Â