WORLD : White House Turns Down Tehran’s Swap-Hostages-for-Assets Feeler

WASHINGTON — The White House, turning a cold shoulder to the latest feeler from Tehran, said today that it will not release frozen Iranian assets to win freedom for American hostages in Lebanon.

“We are not willing to link the Iranian assets question to the hostage question,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said. “That fits within the definition of our policy of not trading arms or money or whatever for hostages, of not paying ransom for hostages.”

“I would not dwell on this one because we do not dwell on this one. This has particular problems as it relates to our hostage policy,” he told reporters who had asked about a Tehran Times report today that Iran is willing to make a deal involving assets frozen by former President Jimmy Carter in 1979 after the seizure of the U.S. Embassy and its staff in Tehran.

Washington is reluctant to make any direct swaps with Iran lest it conjure up memories of the Iran arms deal in which former President Ronald Reagan agreed to send weapons to Iran in return for freedom for U.S. hostages. The secret deal badly eroded Reagan’s standing once it became public.

The Tehran Times, in a report clearly intended to convey government policy, said Iran would act to win freedom for American captives once it was assured that Washington would return the assets. That appeared to be a softening of Iran’s previous insistence that the assets--worth up to $12 billion by Tehran’s estimates--must actually be returned before Tehran sought to influence pro-Iranian factions in Lebanon to free the hostages.