Iran, at odds with the West over its nuclear work, could reach an accommodation with the United States if its critics accepted that the Islamic Republic is here to stay, according to Tehran's ambitious mayor.
For now, Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2005, focuses his energy on alleviating the traffic congestion, air pollution and sewage problems of his sprawling city, home to 8 million by night, swelling to 11 million by day.
But the 46-year-old former police chief is just as eager to talk of Iran's nuclear programme, its troubled relationship with the United States and its geopolitical role in the Middle East.
"The United States and the West make the mistake that they think they can still go back to before the (1979 Islamic) revolution," he told Reuters in an interview in his imposing ninth-floor town hall office. "They should completely forget this."
Qalibaf said Iran's foes should acknowledge that the almost 30-year-old system was a democratic expression of the Iranian people's will and reflected their religious beliefs. "If the Westerners accept this, deal with this fact, Iran should accept to act in the international framework and act based on international regulations," he declared.
Qalibaf, a pragmatic conservative who said he has yet to decide whether to run in next year's presidential election, argued that Iran and the United States shared security interests in a volatile, energy-rich region.
But prospects for any understanding were blocked by US "double standards" on democracy, terrorism and women's rights, as well as on the nuclear dispute, which has roiled oil markets worried about war. "Iran is a fact in the region. They should resolve those issues correctly, not by trying to eliminate or ignore Iran."
Qalibaf said a national consensus existed on Iran's need for peaceful nuclear technology, but acknowledged differences over what tactics to adopt in the conflict with the West.
"How are we going to assure the world that we are not after nuclear weapons?" he asked. "Iranians want to give this assurance to the world and have interaction with the world." The United States and its Western allies suspect that Iran's nuclear programme is not merely to produce electricity, as Tehran asserts, but masks a secret quest for atomic bombs. Washington also accuses Tehran of sponsoring terrorism because of its support for anti-Israeli groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas and the Palestinian Hamas movement.
NO RUSH TO WAR: Qalibaf, a commander of Iran's Basij volunteers in the 1980-88 war with Iraq, said he doubted the United States would attack Iranian nuclear sites, given its military entanglements in the crises plaguing neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We believe the Americans would never act so unwisely as to do the same with Iran as they did with Iraq and Afghanistan." Qalibaf viewed even limited US military operations as unlikely because Iran would respond forcefully. "Starting this might be in the hands of the Americans, but not finishing it," he said, adding that diplomacy offered a more rational option.
Yet while favouring talks on an incentives package offered last month by world powers Qalibaf saw little chance of Iran conceding their demand that it suspend uranium enrichment-a process that can make material for power stations or warheads.
"It's unlikely," he said when asked if Iran could suspend enrichment, without giving up its right to master the nuclear fuel cycle, so that negotiations on the package could begin.
Qalibaf, who succeeded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as mayor of Tehran after losing to him in the presidential election three years ago, faulted some government economic policies. Asked if inflation, now running at 26 percent, had affected the Tehran municipality, he said it was a problem, but one that was foreseeable because of liquidity injected into the system. Ahmadinejad has been widely criticised for fuelling inflation by freely spending to try to meet his promises to put Iran's oil wealth on the tables of his low-income compatriots.