MISSOURI COMMENTARY; AN OPENING TO IRAN

Last week, in hailing the budget/tax agreement worked out between the President and Congress, the New York Times wrote the following. "Passage of the budget deal would fulfill Mr. Clinton's recent hope for a place in history as the President who ended a long string of deficits."

Maybe; maybe not. It's hard to recollect an American history book praising a president as the "great budgeteer"

For now, Clinton has his balanced budget and an inflation-free, high-employment, expanding economy. If the bull market continues until the end of his term, all of the stock market types will, for a while, think well of him. They also thought well of Calvin Coolidge -- for a while.

The Dow Jones average doesn't put a president on Mount Rushmore -- or bring him even half way to the summit. More often than not, the stuff of presidential greatness is often found in war or other foreign policy endeavors. Theodore Roosevelt thought more of his Nobel Prize-winning peace efforts in the Russo-Japanese War and his creation of the Panama Canal than most anything else in his presidential career. Harry Truman, deemed by many to be a failure when he went home to Independence, is now, at the very least, a near great -- in large measure attributable to the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, participating in the creation of Israel as a nation state, and NATO.

Great presidents are daring. For Clinton, Bosnia and Haiti won't be enough. Selecting former Sen. George Mitchell to mediate the bloody dispute in Northern Ireland is worthy, but is not a political catapult. Playing a cool hand in bargaining with Congress won't suffice.

With no major war looming on the horizon, what's around that's big -- really big -- for Clinton to gain some political stature? An opening to Iran. Nixon realized that our post-World War II isolation of China was a geopolitical dead end. Just as Nixon did with China, isn't it about time for us to acknowledge that Iran is part of the world? Except for the misbegotten Iran-Contra fiasco, the United States has had no official contact with Tehran for 18 years. That is almost as long as we snubbed Beijing.

Both Iran and the United States have stood back and cursed each other as if mutual condemnation would solve something. We have shunned them, they have shunned us -- advantage, no one.

Even beginning to heal the breach with Iran would be extraordinary difficult. Iran is officially branded as a "state supporting terrorism." If evidence were produced that the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, where 19 American servicemen lost their lives, had been officially authorized by the Iranian government, then all bets would be off.

After the presidential election in May when the moderate (in Iranian terms) Ayatollah Khatemi was elected, Clinton made a rather gracious statement describing the election as democratic and saying he had "never been pleased about the estrangement between the people of the United States and the people of Iran ... who are very great people." Properly, he also went on to cite some of the enormous concerns we have about Iran's intentions: nuclear arms, terrorism and subversion of the Middle East peace process.

Some (by no means, all), Middle East experts predict that Iran will have a nuclear capability early in the next century. Are we better off just sneering at this disturbing potential?

Of course, the president would be taking on a heavy burden with Congress if he decided to make even a modest approach to Tehran. Last year, just after the TWA 800 tragedy, Congress enacted the so-called Iran/Lybia Sanctions Act. We were certain that one of these demons had blown up the plane. No matter that the experts now say the flight was not blown up with a terrorist bomb. We are just as angry with these low-lifes as if they had been proven to be "good" for the crime!

It took 22 years from the time the communists took power in China to the Nixon opening. The sentiment in the United States was pervasively anti-PRC when Nixon made his move. No one today would argue that the world would be more secure if the PRC-US face-off had continued.

Yes, dealing with Iran may be even more difficult than dealing with the PRC. All the more reason to begin to nudge the process along.

Richard Murphy, a former ambassador and former assistant secretary of state for the Near East, puts it this way, "Washington and Tehran face daunting obstacles to serious pursuit of a new dialogue, but the reasons to make the effort are compelling. As the dominant power we can afford to add the legitimizing carrot of negotiation to the punitive stick of sanctions."

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.