Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Dead Man Walking, Tehran Edition

According to this IHT article, now that the Iran NIE report has essentially removed the possibility of an American attack, the previously muted political faultlines in Tehran have begun to re-emerge. Specifically, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who previously emphasized national unity in the face of the threat of attack, has conspicuously refrained from protecting President Ahmadinejad from his critics. The article also refers to a parallel diplomatic track that Khamenei has conducted using Ali Larijani, the former nuclear negotiator that Ahmadinejad replaced with hardliner Saeed Jalili.

I'm not sure exactly how this piece squares with a few items I flagged last week, in particular Khamenei's very harsh language to describe critics of Ahmadinejad's handling of the nuclear standoff. In addition to Khamenei's major foreign policy pronouncement (in which he also rejected any immediate engagement with the US), Saeed Jalili recently reshuffled the nuclear negotiating team to add more hardliners, and the Iranian navy nearly provoked a shooting incident in the Strait of Hormuz. And all of that in the week leading up to President Bush's visit to the Middle East. So if Tehran is a house divided, it doesn't seem to be reflected in its posture either towards the nuclear standoff in particular, or the US in general.

Update: As noted here, the "previously muted political faultlines in Tehran" were not really that muted. Which makes the IHT piece pretty curious any way you look at it.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   

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