RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Iran has given its first signal in response to the Obama administration talk of engagement with that country, and it's anything but an olive branch. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gave a speech yesterday in which he enumerated Iran's long list of grievances against the U.S. In the portion of the speech broadcast on Iranian television, Ahmadinejad gave no indication he was interested in meeting President Obama halfway. On the line with us now to talk about that from Tehran is NPR's Mike Shuster. Hello.
MIKE SHUSTER: Hi, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Off - help us out with this list of Iranian grievances.
SHUSTER: Oh, well, it was long. The Iranians have always had a long list of grievances against the United States, and they go back more than 50 years now. They start with the CIA-backed coup in 1953 that put the Shah of Iran back on the throne and kept the Shah in power for 25 years. And then they go on to complain about the fact that the United States backed Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and many, many, many Iranians died in that war. There's a smaller incident in 1988, when the United States - a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf shot down a civilian airliner and almost 300 people died.
But the funny - and these were all things that President Ahmadinejad enumerated, essentially saying to President Obama, you've got to apologize for these if you want to see improvement in relations with the United States. The funny thing about this, Renee, is that U.S. officials have in the past apologized for some of these incidents, some of these happenings.
MONTAGNE: Weren't some of those addressed, in fact, during the Clinton administration?
SHUSTER: They were. In 2000, then-Secretary of State Albright gave a speech in Washington in which she apologized for the U.S. - the CIA coup that backed the Shah. And she also said it was regrettable that the United States had backed Saddam Hussein and Iraq and the Iran-Iraq war. And in fact, the U.S. has paid compensation to those who lost relatives in the 1988 civilian airline shoot-down. So it's a little bit strange that Ahmadinejad would bring these up again and ask again for an apology. It's not clear whether he was aware of those previous so-called apologies, or whether he just wanted it out there that there are these big issues that still stand as obstacles to improved relations between Iran and the United States.
MONTAGNE: Among Iranians, though, how widespread are these sentiments?
SHUSTER: Well, it certainly feels true that those who support President Ahmadinejad, the sort of conservative side of the political spectrum here, this is their view. I've done several interviews this week in which I've heard these exact same issues brought up and spoken about in the same language.
There's also another side of the political spectrum here. There are reformers, they backed the previous president, Mohammad Khatami. They would like to see a reformer return to the presidency, the president's office in Iran. And although they begin by saying that there's not much difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to Iran policy, once they get that out of the way, they start talking about how if there was a different president in Iran, if it wasn't Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there might be a better response to the current overtures from the White House, and there might be actual progress between Iran and the United States.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Mike Shuster in Tehran. Thanks very much.
SHUSTER: You're welcome, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep is on assignment in Iran. On Saturday, he'll report from the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran marks the 30th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution. And next week on Morning Edition, Iranians tell their stories of life in a nation long at odds with the United States.