U.S. has few inroads to understanding Iran

The extent and frequency of U.S. contacts with Iranian opposition figures is even less clear than the meager channels to the authoritarian regime.

In part because of Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology, which the U.S. believes is a disguised effort to build nuclear weapons, U.S. intelligence agencies and diplomats have put a high priority on tracking a variety of Iranian activities.

The CIA has links to international business people who either travel to Iran or have encounters, through conferences or other events, with Iranians in fields of interest to the U.S.

The State Department in 2006 set up an Iran monitoring post in Dubai, across the Persian Gulf from Iran, to quietly expand links to Iranians in the region.

Dubai is widely described as a focus of Iranian intelligence, which keeps a close eye on — and may even have a hand in — Iranian business. The first director of the Dubai office was Jillian Burns, now an Iran and Iraq policy planner at the State Department.

Also in 2006 the State Department established "Iran watchers" in U.S. embassies in Europe, including in Berlin.

"Their job is to reach out, talk to Iranians," said Patrick Clawson, a Persian-speaking author of several books on Iran. He is deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank.

Clawson said the CIA has hired Iranian-Americans in this country to scour publicly available information produced by Iranians. The intelligence agencies and the departments of State and Defense also have put a much greater emphasis on training their officers in the Persian language and culture, he said.

"Just an explosion of people taking Persian courses," he said, adding that this has improved the government's ability to understand developments in Iran in the past few years.

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