A quarter-century after its first traumatic confrontation with the Shiite world, when the U.S. Embassy was seized in Iran, the United States is moving on several fronts to support, recognize or hold out the prospect of engagement with Islam's increasingly powerful minority. The White House is now counting on a Shiite-dominated government to stabilize Iraq.
In a tactical shift, the United States is indirectly reaching out to Iran, backing Europe's offer of economic incentives to get Tehran to surrender any nuclear weapons program. And in Lebanon, President Bush suggested yesterday, Washington might accept Hezbollah as a political party -- if it renounces terrorism, as the Palestine Liberation Organization did in 1988.
"I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they're not by laying down arms and not threatening peace," he said in a joint appearance with Jordan's King Abdullah....
Shiite extremism in the 1980s embodied the main terrorist threat to the United States, as Shiite groups in Lebanon blew up two U.S. embassies and a Marine compound, and later seized dozens of Western hostages. In Kuwait, Iraq's Shiite Dawa movement simultaneously bombed the U.S. and French embassies as well as Western businesses.
The tentative U.S. moves to engage Shiite leaders are often not by choice or design, but rather a reflection of realities on the ground, including the fact that Shiites are the largest sects in three countries where the United States has enormous stakes, U.S. officials and regional experts say.
Together, the steps represent a turning point after decades in which Washington's relations with and policies toward the Middle East were shaped largely by interaction with Sunni leaders, who controlled the region's oil resources and politics....Cont.
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