"Difficult to Forget"

As a top aide to Ayatullah Khomeini and an 18-year resident of the U.S., Iran's Foreign Minister, Ibrahim Yazdi, has a unique perspective on his country's revolution. Last week he shared his views with TIME's Tehran bureau chief, Bruce van Voorst.

Yazdi warns that the U.S. record as "one of the full supporters of the Shah" has posed a serious problem in relations between Tehran and Washington. Iran's new government, he says, "cannot avoid the conclusion that Americans have been involved in each killing, torture and case of corruption" in the past. Iranians "do not have bad intentions [against Americans], but it is very difficult for them to forget."

If relations are to improve, says Yazdi, "it is up to the U.S. to change," not Iran. If anti-Americanism has become a persistent theme in Tehran today, "it is because Zionism is so closely interwoven" with U.S. policy. Israel is "the greatest loser as a result of the Iranian revolution," he says. "They lost their best base in the Middle East. The Shah gave them everything they wanted."

Iran now intends to follow a policy of nonalignment, or what Yazdi describes as "positive neutrality." Tehran, he explains, will be "neutral in the quarrel between the superpowers, but also positive in that we shall not isolate ourselves. Whoever is ready to support our cause will have friendly relations with us."

Islam's political dominance in Iran is perfectly natural, says Yazdi. "Secularism does not have any place in Islam," he notes. However, he denies the domination of Bazargan's provisional government by the Islamic Revolutionary Council. "The provisional government is no less Islamic than the council, which acts as an interim parliament. I look on Khomeini not as a theologian, as you call him, but as a revolutionary leader. Khomeini is at the helm of our revolution, just as Mao was at that of the Chinese."

The revolution now has two kinds of opponents, he says. On one side are those he describes as "part of the plot against the government," including not only rightists but also far leftists. "We have drawn a clear line between our Islamic ideology and that of the Marxists," Yazdi says.

The second group of opponents of the revolution includes those "who are bitter and bankrupt, who after six months of strikes cannot support their families. They are easy targets of agitation." To this group, Yazdi says, "we try to explain that problems cannot be corrected overnight."

The need for institutionalized government and politics will be satisfied soon, he maintains. A draft constitution is to be published in a week or two; a constituent assembly will be convened to approve it, then elections will be held. "After that," Yazdi says, "the provisional government will hand everything over to the new government and say goodbye."

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