A new Iranian government under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be inaugurated Aug. 4. While outgoing President Mohammad Khatami is a moderate, Ahmadinejad is a hardline conservative whose relations with the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush are likely to be tense. As this is undesirable for stability in the Middle East, it is hoped that Japan and the European Union will do their best to help avert a conflict between Washington and Tehran.

In his State of the Union address in January 2002, Bush named Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, as an "axis of evil." This stance remains unchanged in the second term of the Bush administration. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a Senate hearing last January, included Iran in what Washington called the six "outposts of tyranny." In the first term, the administration denounced states sponsoring terrorism; in the second term, it began a campaign for the protection of human rights and democratization, adding Belarus, Zimbabwe and Myanmar as targets of censure.

It is hard to understand why the U.S. takes such a hostile approach to Iran. I have kept a close watch on U.S.-Iranian relations since I was assigned to postrevolution Tehran in 1980 as a correspondent for a Japanese newspaper. The two countries severed diplomatic relations immediately after radical students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and held 52 diplomats hostage. Although Iran released all the hostages 444 days after the crisis began, Washington has continued its freeze on Iranian assets in the U.S. and its economic sanctions against the country under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act.