US group given rare approval to set up in Iran

The United States has granted rare approval to a U.S.-based group to establish an office in Iran, the State Department said Thursday, stressing however that U.S. policy towards the Islamic republic has not changed.

The American Iranian Council (AIC), a research and policy think tank devoted to improving ties between the two arch enemies, was given a license to establish a presence in Tehran by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), officials said.

"We understand that a license has been granted to the American-Iranian Council but would refer you to the Office of Foreign Asset Control at the Treasury Department for any information regarding OFAC licenses," the office of State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

The OFAC enforces U.S. sanctions against countries such as Iran, Sudan and Cuba. It could not be reached for immediate comment.

But McCormack's office said in a statement that U.S. "policy has not changed" with the approval.

"We encourage efforts to increase people-to-people contacts between the people of Iran and the people of the United States in order to expand mutual understanding, as long as parties involved work in accordance with U.S. laws and regulations," the statement said.

The AIC will be the only U.S. based peace and conflict resolution non-governmental organization operating in Iran, said its executive director, Brent Lollis.

"We look forward to helping governmental officials, NGO officials, and especially common citizens in working with us to promote respectful, rational and direct dialog between the United States and Iran," he said in a report on the group's website.

"This AIC office is a first step on the path to the institutionalization of a normalized relationship," he said.

U.S. and Iran have no diplomatic relations, broken off in 1980 after Islamist students took U.S. diplomats hostage at the embassy in Tehran.

In the past year Iran charged three visiting Iranian-American scholars with espionage and detained another.

Iran has accused the United States of using intellectuals and others inside the country to undermine the Islamic Republic through what it calls "velvet revolution," a reference to the nonviolent overthrow of Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989.

The United States has dismissed the accusation and denied that the scholars were spies.

While Washington has taken a tougher line toward the Islamic republic, accusing it of backing armed groups in Iraq, thwarting any Middle East settlement with its support for the Palestinian Hamas movement and Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance group, and using its nuclear program as a cover to acquire nuclear arms.