The Islamic Republic of Iran, established in the late 1970s, has never been an outstanding ally of the United States.
In 1979, a mob of Iranian students held about 50 Americans hostage for more than 400 days inside the U.S. embassy in Iran's capital, Tehran. More recently, Time magazine reported that in October 2001, before Allied forces began bombarding Afghanistan, a \high-ranking"" Iranian official was dispatched to Kabul to offer safe haven to Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.
Despite these tensions, some political scientists and experts on the Islamic country question Iran's association with neighboring Iraq and North Korea, the two other components of what President Bush described as an ""axis of evil"" in his State of the Union address last week.
Gary Sick, a Columbia University adjunct professor and director of the school's Middle East Institute, said militarily, Iran has probably taken strides to develop nuclear weapons, but they do not necessarily pose a direct threat to the United States.
""I think their interest in having that capability is because they live next to Saddam Hussein,"" he said. ""They fought a war with him, and I think Iran is pretty well convinced that he is going for weapons of mass destruction including a nuclear weapon again.""
Iran and Iraq's association and the insinuation that they are somehow allied is an erroneous assumption, according to David Leheny, a UW-Madison professor of political science and a former staffer at the U.S. Department of State's counter-terrorism office.
Millions of soldiers perished in the Iran-Iraq War, which raged from 1980 to 1988.
""Iran and Iraq hate each other,"" he said. ""It's just an absurd way to put these countries together. That's not to deny that Iran has posed a threat, but [if[ it's just simplified that this is the axis of evil, it's a big mistake especially given what you know is the reform process that is going on in Iran.""
In June 2001, Iranian citizens resoundingly reelected President Mohammad Khatami, a political and social reformer. As an Islamic Republic, however, Iran is ultimately ruled by a group of Shi'ite Muslim clerics, who have the power to veto any legislation championed by the civilian president and parliament. The current Iranian supreme leader is hard-liner Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the successor of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In reference to President Bush's ""axis of evil"" comment, Khamenei told the Islamic Republic News Agency that Washington, D.C., was in fact ""the greatest evil.""
Although President Khatami is known as a reformer and has improved his country's relations with the West, real change still happens very slowly in Iran, Sick said.
""Khatami is indeed a reformer, but someone who is more interested in the philosophy of reform than he is in real action,"" he said. ""He has been reluctant to engage himself in a serious way or to confront the system.""
Sick added that he believes Bush's ""axis"" statement serves well the Bush administration's long-standing desire to implement a missile defense system, an assertion with which Leheny said he is in agreement.
""This all fits together with the idea of missile defense,"" he said. ""The idea that the United States wants to create a missile shield that will defend it from a missile attack from a rogue state.""
Sick did say, however, that although the ""axis"" classification is ambiguous and ""clumsy,"" the countries are all joined by the fact that they have taken steps in the past to develop weapons of mass destruction.
""I think the slogan is misleading but I think the objective and what these three countries do have in common is that all three of them are at least potential proliferators in the sense of developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons,"" he said.
