Justice Vs Security/Stability.

But Tehran later charged four Iranian-US citizens with anti-state activities, prompting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to brand the move "a perversion of the rule of law". Ms Rice's charge had serious implications for both the Shi'ite theocracy of Iran and the Alawite/Ba'thist dictatorship of Syria, as both are offering the US and its allies an exchange of security (i.e., regional stability) in return for "the rule of law" (justice).

However, on May 30 the UN Security Council (UNSC) approved the establishment, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, of an international court to try the killers of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri - a move which could potentially have serious implications for Iran's Shi'ite theocracy and its Syrian ally, an Alawite/Ba'thist dictatorship (see news23-LebSyrFatahIslamHaririJun4-07).

President Bush on June 1 demanded that Tehran free "immediately and unconditionally" the four US citizens. He said the four were in Iran to visit their parents or conduct humanitarian work and posed no threat. He named Haleh Esfandiari, an academic; Parnaz Azima, a reporter; Kian Tajbakhsh, a social scientist; and Ali Shakeri, a member of a US non-governmental organisation (NGO), saying: "I strongly condemn their detention at the hands of Iranian authorities. They should be freed immediately and unconditionally". He also demanded information about a former FBI agent, Robert Levinson, who had been missing since visiting Iran on March 8.

Although Bush's intervention raised the issue of the detainees to a new level, the US sought to keep the dispute separate from the renewed diplomacy with Iran. But National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley on June 1 warned that "capturing innocent Americans" was "not helpful" in resolving the issues of Iran's destabilisation of Iraq, and its alleged nuclear weapons programme.

For its part, Iran demands the release of five of its officials - said to be members of the Quds Force of Iran's co-ruling Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) held by US forces in Iraq since January. But it did not raise that issue in the Baghdad talks either. On June 2 the FT quoted US analysts as saying Iran's action against the four dual nationals appeared aimed at countering what it saw as US efforts to undermine the regime through its secret funding of Iranian civil society activists. But the FT said none of the four arrested had been funded by the State Department's democracy money - though Iran's ministry of intelligence has accused Ms Esfandiari, head of the Middle East programme at Washington's Woodrow Wilson Centre, and Mr Tajbakhsh, a consultant for the Open Society Institute founded by George Soros, of working together to foment a "soft revolution". Both institutions have strongly denied the allegations, and say their work was transparent and well known to the Iranian authorities.

Yet it is not clear exactly what formal charges have been made against the four. Iranian officials and official media reports have variously spoken of espionage and acting against national security, and in the case of Ms Azima, who is out of prison on bail, of making "propaganda against Iran" for US-funded Radio Farda. Mr Shakeri's arrest has not been confirmed by the Iranian authorities. Iran's foreign ministry has denied all knowledge of Mr Levinson.

The workings of the UNSC-approved court in the Hariri case and other murders in Lebanon will be related to terrorism, under UNSC Resolution 1595 which could have potentially explosive implications for the Shi'ite theocracy and for its Shi'ite offshoot in Lebanon, Hizbullah, as well as for the Syrian regime. Both are being accused by the US of having been behind the killing and kidnapping of many Americans in Lebanon at the hands of Hizbullah in the 1980s.

France, the other main power behind the UN tribunal, has been accusing both Iran/Hizbullah and Syria of having been behind the killing of many French troops in Lebanon in 1983, when the US and Soviet Union were in cold war and Damascus - which then controlled Lebanon - depended heavily on the support of the Soviet Union which deterred the West (see news23-LebSyrFatahIslamHaririJun4-07).