Friday, January 4, 2008

Iran Digs In

As opaque and multi-polar as the Iranian regime is, what's often revealing is not just what gets said, but who says it. So this is pretty discouraging:

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday that Iran sees "no benefit" in resuming ties with the United States at the moment but does not rule out a resumption of relations in the future.

In his most significant speech on foreign policy in several months, Khamenei also vowed that Iran would not halt sensitive work on its controversial nuclear programme as demanded by the West.

That would be bad enough for anyone hoping that Iran might decide to forego its uranium enrichment program as part of a negotiated settlement to the crisis. But it gets worse.

While it's important to remember that Iran's nuclear program was aggressively pursued under the rule of the moderates, it's also true that they have been increasingly critical of Ahmadinejad's antagonistic negotiating stance, which they claim has unnecessarily isolated Iran. As Supreme Leader, Khamenei functions as the final arbiter of such policy disputes, and it looks like he just arbited:

He angrily lashed out at moderates inside Iran who had cautiously suggested that the country should consider suspending enrichment to de-escalate the nuclear crisis.

"Some people challenge the system and the government over this and, in line with the enemy, seek to create disappointment. The nation should be watchful of such infiltrations."

Ahmadinejad has already had one of the outspoken critics of his nuclear policy -- a member of the nuclear negotiating team under Larijani -- arrested on charges of spying for England. And his parliamentary supporters have compared such criticism, which they call shadow diplomacy, to treachery. So it strikes me as noteworthy to see that sort of language turn up in Khamenei's speech.

Add this to the news I flagged the other day that Saeed Jalili -- Ahmadinejad's handpicked replacement of Larijani as head of the Iranian nuclear negotiating team -- just reshuffled the rest of the team to include even more hardliners, and it looks like the Iranian reaction to the NIE report has become increasingly clear.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   

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