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Discontented Iranians have found a place to call home

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published October 24, 2006

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates

Nasser Hashempour, vice president of the Iranian Business Council in Dubai, likes to tell a joke about this tiny Persian Gulf nation where almost everyone comes from somewhere else:

During a drought, the UAE government asked all residents to pray for rain. It poured - in India and Pakistan.

The government tried again, this time asking "locals" to pray. And again it poured - in Iran.

At least 300,000 of the UAE's 2.6-million people are Iranians who've moved here for greater business opportunities and freedom from the hard-line policies that made their own country part of President Bush's "axis of evil." The flood has increased since last year's election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with his rants against Israel and his relentless pursuit of a nuclear program.

"We can't talk politics," says Hashempour, whose council is strictly business-oriented, "but Iranians are all worried about this matter and try to go to another country. Dubai is the nearest and it's very easy to travel to."

As evidence that the Iranian community is "growing by the day," as Hashempour puts it, the number of Iranian students in UAE universities has soared to 11,500, from just 2,400 three years ago. Iranians are said to own more than a third of all luxury apartments on the outskirts of Dubai, the UAE's commercial hub. The Iranian Business Council, formed less than 15 years ago, has more than 400 members.

The presence of so many Iranians has made the UAE - one of the most modern Arab nations and a close U.S. ally - a comfortable place for "Iran-watchers" to keep an eye on the Islamic republic despite a freeze in formal U.S.-Iranian relations.

According to the Associated Press, a small team of American diplomats has quietly opened an office in Dubai to monitor Iran and reach out to its people through scholarly conferences and other types of "soft diplomacy."

Unfortunately, at least from the U.S. point of view, the close ties between the UAE and Iran also make the emirates a good base for anyone trying to get around the international economic sanctions that could be imposed on Iran if it continues its nuclear program. (The country has been off-limits to American companies since Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979 and held 52 hostages for 444 days.)

Just 90 miles across the Strait of Hormuz, the UAE is Iran's biggest trading partner. Many Iranian firms are thought to have "fronts" here, including some the State Department claims are bent on acquiring weapons and technology blocked by the U.S. trade embargo. There is also a brisk smuggling business using speedy cigarette boats and tiny traditional dhows.

Hashempour is among those who doubt international sanctions would be very effective, given the ease of movement and the amount of trade - legal and otherwise - between the UAE and Iran.

"There are a lot of Iranians here, and they probably could do business in different ways even though I don't believe Iranians are the type of people to do things illegally - in the United States, where there are many more, they never make problems," Hashempour says.

"Besides, it's not only Iranians that work with Iran. I know a lot of Arab and Europeans sitting here working with Iran as UAE-based companies." And Hashempour says American firms are also eager for direct business with Iran, whose oil wealth and 70-million people make it a "very big market."

"I believe Iranians and Americans can as individuals be friends and do business together without the involvement of politics," he says.

Hashempour, who left Iran as a child in 1967, lived in Canada and the United States before moving to Dubai in 1988. He owns a general trading company that imports carpets, foodstuffs and petrochemicals from Iran, which he still visits several times a year. But his headquarters is in one of the UAE's sleek new office towers.

Behind his desk is a photo of him with Sheik Mohammed, a member of the UAE's ruling family.

After living so long outside Iran, Hashempour doubts he will ever permanently return.

But he says many other Iranian expatriates would like to go back if the business climate improves and political tensions between the United States and the regime ever ease.

"In my personal opinion, I believe it is the right of Iran to have this nuclear power as long as it is under international law and nuclear nonproliferation rules," Hashempour says. "That is what a lot of other Iranians think, too. But we hope the problem will be solved politically and that it's not going to be done in an illogical way for both sides."

Susan Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.

[Last modified October 24, 2006, 05:38:16]