The modern Middle East is an unstable patchwork of artificial borders that were drawn by scheming colonial masters bent on dividing and ruling, not unifying and stabilizing. Although the region is one of the oldest inhabited places on Earth, the sovereign nation-state is a relatively new concept. Consider Iran's immediate neighbors. They have spent the better part of the last 80 years as infant nations struggling to hold their fractious populations together. Iraq has its Kurds in the north and its Shia Muslims in the south. Afghanistan has its Uzbeks, Tajiks, Pashtuns and Hazaras. Pakistan has its Pashtuns, Balochis and Sindis. Even in relatively stable Turkey, the government has been waging a vicious war in the southeast against breakaway Kurds. The fledgling "--stan" nations of the Caucasus region to Iran's north are barely a decade old after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In this unruly neighborhood, Iran has a key attribute that few have: a potent national identity stretching back over 2,000 years, transcending religious, ethnic and sectarian differences. Iran has its own Kurdish, Azeri Turk, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Armenian communities. But all Iranians, including these groups, share a fierce, almost ethnocentric national pride. They consider themselves a race ethnically and linguistically distinct from Semitic Arabs or Turks. This common consciousness within the mind of each Iranian creates a collective stability that can act as an anchor in an otherwise balkanized region.

Iran's geography also makes it important to our strategic objectives in the region after 9/11. As Gary Sick, former national security chief under President Carter, has pointed out, Iran is uniquely located between the "twin towers" of terrorism, Afghanistan and Iraq. It has exercised an important influence over both nations and their internal politics for millennia. Moreover, Iran's interests in these countries are now more than ever aligned with America's.

The Bush administration claims that Iran is meddling in Afghanistan and trying to destabilize the fledgling government there, with the aim of ensuring a more religious state. But these reports -- which have been categorically denied by Tehran -- are highly unlikely to be true. Destabilizing Afghanistan is not in Iran's interest. Why would Iran want to destabilize an Afghan government that it already has some influence over through its longtime client, the Northern Alliance, one of the most powerful constituencies within the Karzai regime? And why would it want to re-install a Sunni religious regime that would more than likely be hostile to its Shiite brand of Islam? This reasoning extends to allegations that Iran may be giving sanctuary to al-Qaida members. The clerics of Iran have little reason to harbor escapees whose puritanical, Wahhabi strain of Islam they find abhorrent.

Indeed, in response to Bush administration allegations that Iran was harboring al-Qaida members, Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi extended an unprecedented invitation to U.S. agents to come to Iran, share their intelligence and help the Iranian authorities root out al-Qaida. The American response to Kharrazi's overture: silence. It seems the Bush administration is more comfortable with Iran as an enemy even if the Islamic Republic's behavior contradicts this image.

What Iran is concerned with is its growing encirclement by American-backed regimes and the presence of U.S. forces near its borders. Its border "mischief" of late is sphere-of-influence jockeying, not a coordinated move against the nascent Afghan government. After all, America has scored two impressive military victories over Iran's close neighbors in the last 10 years. It is the spread of American influence in its neighborhood that Iran fears. If we can establish some level of trust with the Khatami government, far from being a nuisance, a friendly Iran could influence the Northern Alliance leaders to work more smoothly with the Karzai coalition for a stable Afghanistan. A maker of mischief would become a guarantor of peace and prosperity in a war-torn land.

But perhaps the best indication of Iran's positive intentions in Afghanistan is its commitment to rebuild the war-shattered nation. Iran has pledged $560 million over three years, making it the single largest contributor in the world. Of course, self-interest is involved, as it is with every nation's foreign policy -- but unless the U.S. makes Iran its enemy, that self-interest need not be threatening to U.S. interests.

Iran could also play a vital role in America's dealings with Iraq. Under the ruthless rule of Saddam Hussein, Iran's western neighbor has long been the premier outlaw state in the region and may be next on America's list in the war on terror. Iran fought a bloody war with Iraq in the 1980s and has no love for a regime that supports dissident anti-Iranian guerilla groups. At the same time, Iran has broad political and spiritual influence with the clear majority of Iraqis who belong to the Shia sect of Islam. In fact, this influence was a major factor in the U.S. decision not to overthrow Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf War: We feared a pro-Iranian state would replace him. By befriending a moderate Iran that fear would disappear. A friendly Iran could influence Shia dissident groups to work more closely with other factions in Iraq, such as the Kurds, for a pluralist, stable nation.

World energy security is another area where a relationship with Iran would pay huge dividends. Iran is the third largest exporter of oil in the world and contains 15 percent of global natural gas reserves. It is strategically located just south of the Caspian and Central Asian regions and could shore up the stability of those areas while reducing the transport costs of their massive oil and gas reserves to Western markets. The cheapest pipeline route from the Caspian region to the Persian Gulf is indisputably through Iran. By relying more heavily on Iranian, Caspian and Central Asian petroleum resources, America could ultimately reduce its own dependence on Saudi oil and the complex Arab-Israeli politics that accompany it.

But peace and stability in the Middle East and security for America will not only depend on the strength of our strategic alliances with Iran and other nations. We have strong relations with the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but this did not prevent Saudi and Egyptian nationals from committing the atrocities of 9/11. In fact, it was these exact relationships that motivated our attackers. Political dissent in Egypt and Saudi Arabia has been summarily crushed since their creation as nations. It was only a matter of time before it became radicalized and boiled over to strike what is perceived as the main patron of the Egyptian and Saudi regimes -- the United States.

Although most Muslims find Osama bin Laden's tactics and worldview abhorrent, he does articulate a legitimate grievance against America from the Muslim perspective: How can the Bush administration make no distinction between terrorists and those who support or harbor them at the same time that it gives billions each year in military aid to nations, such as Egypt and Israel, that systematically wage terror against populations under their control? The hypocrisy only becomes more glaring when the Bush administration claims that there is no such thing as a "good terrorist" or a "bad terrorist." For many Muslims, there clearly has been a distinction in the mind-set of American leaders for some time. So far we are losing the war for hearts and minds in the Middle East.

A rehabilitated relationship with Iran could help win that war. Many Muslims believe, rightly or wrongly, that America is trying to secularize the politics of the Muslim world, to strip Muslims of their religion. Why else would America support countries like Turkey and Algeria even after military juntas in both nations squashed peaceful Islamic movements that had won free and fair elections? From the Muslim perspective this is a double standard: When Islamic political parties play by the West's rules of liberal democracy and win, they are quietly removed from power.

Forcibly purging Islam from the political spectrum, whether it is a conscious strategy or not, is not the answer. It has been tried in the past, creating a backlash that only aggravated the political landscape. Both Turkey and Iran experimented with forced secularization in the first half of the 20th century. In Iran, it only contributed to a violent Islamic revolution. In Turkey, it led to a cabal of generals wielding entirely too much political influence in a nation where the only grass-roots political organization is still the Islamist Virtue party. Excluding Islam, a religion intimately intertwined with politics since its inception, from political life will only radicalize the tactics of its adherents, as has already happened in Egypt and Algeria.

Alternatively, by including Islamic political parties within the political development process, you do two things. You begin to reinvent Islam, rationalizing a religion that, unlike Christianity, has never experienced a reformation with the modern world of tolerance and civil liberties. You also reinvent Western democracy, making it more culturally authentic in the eyes of its Muslims citizens.

Today, Iran is the only country in the Middle East that is experimenting with highly potent forms of both democracy and Islam. It is also the only nation in the region whose people have waged a successful revolution against the tyranny that is such a common component of Middle Eastern governments. This has created perhaps the most charged political atmosphere in the region. It has given Iran the chance to politically evolve like no other state in the history of the Middle East. Unlike in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the people of Iran have peaceful means of articulating their dissent within the political system. They do not need to resort to acts of terrorism at home or abroad. They can vote conservatives out of office, as they did in overwhelming numbers in the recent presidential and parliamentary elections. They can express their views in one of the reformist newspapers that, despite periodic government crackdowns, have made Iran's print media the most vibrant in the region.

This political environment makes Iran breathe like no other nation in the region. However committed the ruling clerics are to preserving Islamic restrictions in Iran, there is a natural limit to their repression. What is little understood in the United States is that the Islamic revolution was waged against oppression and for accountable government. The clerics cannot be seen to betray the same principles that they themselves fought for.

Perhaps most intriguing of all is the fact that there are no clear-cut battle lines in this war between conservatives and reformers in Iran. Many of the most outspoken reformists are also respected members of the conservative religious establishment. This is a telling measure of how much Iran has evolved since the days of the revolution and how infected with change even the Iranian clerical groups have become. Take Ayatollah Hosein-Ali Montazeri, for instance. In the early years after the revolution, Montazeri was Khomeini's heir apparent and one of the architects of Islamic rule. He preached global Islamic revolution and was a conduit for funds to terrorist groups around the world. Today, Montazeri is one of the fiercest opponents of the ruling clerics, openly criticizing their autocratic rule and personally attacking the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, himself. Although he has been reprimanded, the ruling clerics do not have the power to completely silence him. Drawing from a venerated tradition of competitive argument and independent judgment that has its roots in the Shia brand of Islam, he continues to critique clerical rule.

In other words, in Iran, it is not only the political landscape that is being transformed. Islam itself is being re-created, as some clerics call for a reinterpretation of the faith to accommodate the demands of modern life. Others call for a wholesale withdrawal of the mullahs from government. What is slowly emerging from this conflict is a wholly authentic blend of Islamic and democratic values that Iran's people can call their own. In a region of political underdeveloped and despotic nations, Iran could be a model for stable, accountable government -- a government that shares both America's democratic values and its strategic interests.

I have many more reasons than most Americans to hate the Islamic Republic of Iran. After the revolution the new regime seized my family's pharmaceuticals company with a nonchalant wave of the hand, stripping my father and his brothers of their life's work, a business they had created from selling cough syrup door-to-door. Worse, like many Iranians, my family was wrenched from our cherished homeland and splintered across the globe as perpetual exiles.

It is easy to hate. It is easy to punish, to ignore, to attack and criticize. It is much harder to sit down, work out differences and develop trust. So far, both America and Iran have taken the easy way out. This is understandable, given the legitimate grievances both countries have against one another. But these misdeeds are well in the past. A new generation of reform-minded Iranians reminds us of our own struggles for freedom as a young nation. We should nurture, not spurn them. Moreover, showing that we can reach out, even to the fundamentalist nation that slapped us in the face 22 years ago, would send an enlightened, mature message to the rest of the Islamic world. With our encouragement, Iran could yet reinvent itself as one of the few democratic states in the Middle East, one that is also comfortable with its Muslim heritage. And that would be a victory for the future of Islam and democracy.

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