States would be possible only when Washington dropped its hostile attitude toward
Iran, Khatami added. He also acted on his words, reportedly dispatching numerous
academics, businessmen, and other supporters of his government to the United States
for informal meetings that explored the possibility of improved relations.
The Clinton administration moved cautiously in response to Khatami’s outreach,
starting with the authorization for an American wrestling team to participate in a tour-
nament in Tehran in February 1998. Administration officials compared this move to
the exchange of table tennis teams between the United States and China—an exchange
referred to as “ping-pong diplomacy”—that preceded President Richard M. Nixon’s
historic visit to China in 1972.
On June 17, 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave a speech to the Asia
Society proposing that Washington and Tehran work together on a “road map lead-
ing to normal relations.” At an April 12, 1999, White House dinner celebrating the
impending change of millennium, President Clinton, apparently eager to set aside past
grievances, in an off-the-cuff talk acknowledged that Iran “has been the subject of quite
a lot of abuse from various Western nations.” He added that Americans should set
aside their “total denial” about Iran’s grievances. This was the closest any president
had come to acknowledging that Iran had legitimate complaints about past U.S. activ-
ities there. The Clinton administration followed with limited moves, lifting some sanc-
tions against trade with Iran that had been in place since the 1979–1980 hostage cri-
sis, including easing the sale of humanitarian goods and safety-related spare parts for
U.S.-made aircraft.
In the meantime, however, Khatami had begun losing internal power struggles
with the more hard-line factions in Tehran. In July 1999, Iranian police violently sup-
pressed a student revolt at Tehran University, indicating that Khatami ultimately had
lost his battle to control the security services.
The Clinton administration’s final, and most important, opening to Iran came on
March 17, 2000, when Albright delivered a speech in Washington to the American-
Iranian Council, a group promoting better relations between Iran and the United
States. Surveying the broad scope of U.S.-Iranian relations in recent years, Albright
became the first high-level U.S. official to recognize explicitly one of Tehran’s major
grievances: “In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the
overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh,” she said. “The
Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but
the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see
now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their inter-
nal affairs.” Albright also acknowledged that the shah’s government, which was backed
by the United States, “brutally repressed political dissent.”
Albright also recited long-standing U.S. complaints about Iran, notably its sup-
port for groups that used terror in the Middle East, but the broad thrust of her speech
was positive and included an announcement of the administration’s plan to ease an
embargo on the importation of some Iranian consumer goods, among them carpets,
nuts, dried fruit, and caviar. “I call upon Iran to join us in writing a new chapter in
our shared history,” she said. “Let us be open about our differences and strive to over-
come them. Let us acknowledge our common interests and strive to advance them.”
Any hopes were quickly dashed in Washington that Albright’s speech—notably its
extraordinary admission of U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup—would lead to a rapid
396 IRAN