If sport be the continuation of politics - even of war - by other means there is a pleasing significance in the fact that Iran has been drawn against the United States in the first round of the soccer World Cup next summer. Coming on the eve of yesterday's opening session of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, attended by some 30 heads of state and government in defiance of US efforts to secure a regional boycott, the draw takes on an added significance. It looks like the end of Iran's isolation, just as it marks the end of its repeated attempts to export its Islamic revolution.
The Iranian achievement in qualifying for the soccer tournament occasioned a real outburst of popular feeling in Tehran last week in support of a more normal relationship with the rest of the world, as has been advocated by the new president, Hojatolislam Mohamed Khatami. Women were particularly prominent in the celebrations, rejecting orders from conservative Islamist leaders not to attend. It is clear that women voted very strongly for Mr Khatami and have been to the fore in pressing for further liberalisation.
It all adds up to an important moment in Iranian history. The new president has to share power with a reactionary clerical establishment unreconciled to the changes he is pledged to introduce and in a strong position to delay or roll them back. That these differing attitudes apply as much in foreign as domestic policy may readily be seen from the starkly contrasting speeches made to yesterday's gathering by President Khatami and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. The president spoke in hope that "a new order based on pluralism is taking shape in the world that, God willing, will not be the monopoly of any single power". He called for a "sophisticated understanding" of other points of view based on tolerance, whereas Ayatollah Khamenei launched a blistering attack on the West as "materialistic, money-seeking, gluttonous and carnal".
The fact that such an array of monarchs, princes, presidents and ministers from surrounding states was prepared to travel to Tehran tells its own story of where they think Iran is headed and of the need to engage and influence its leaders. Perhaps the most important visitor is Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who offered to mediate between Iran and the United States. His presence is a calculated affront to Washington's strategy of dual containment of Iraq and Iran, made even more pointed by the simultaneous presence in Tehran of the Iraqi vice-president.
Prince Abdullah made a general statement of policy that stands as a good summary of what is at stake in the argument over Islamic policies. "It is not in the nature of things", he argued, "for all Muslims to arrive at a single interpretation of how the Islamic states should look, or a common approach to an Islamic jurisprudence, or a single conception of international politics". Such a line of argument should be listened to more carefully by international policy-makers dealing with the Middle East, notably those in Washington. The opportunity is plainly there to influence the direction of Iranian policy and to reward or penalise it according to behaviour rather than dogmatic rejection of the significance of these changes. The European Union has been quite correct to take such a course and to urge it on President Clinton.