Divisions in Ahmadinejad's ranks add uncertainty to a lack of consensus, writes JEFFREY FLEISHMANand BORZOU DARAGAHIin Cairo and Beirut
IRAN’S PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in one instant can appear the diplomatic equivalent of damaged goods and in the next a confident leader whose speeches leave the West wondering how to deal with him and his nation now that he’s won a much-disputed re-election.
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev greeted Ahmadinejad at a recent meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization but did not grant him a private meeting as he had the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Belarus, the Iranian leader was met not by President Alexander Lukashenko but by the speaker of the upper house of parliament.
A similar pattern has emerged in the Middle East, where Arab regimes have long been wary of Iran’s ambitions. Authorities in Jordan withdrew licences for two Iranian news organisations this week, and the sultan of Oman reportedly cancelled a trip to Tehran after the unrest that followed Iran’s June 12th election.
Snubs and slights in the diplomatic world are common, sometimes almost imperceptible. But as long as Ahmadinejad remains in power, with the support of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there are concerns about how the fallout over his re-election will influence diplomacy regarding Iran’s nuclear programme, regional stature and relations with the US and Europe.
The crackdown on dissent and its accusations of western meddling have led the Obama administration, which had sought to open dialogue with Iran, to toughen its tone. The European Union is contemplating recalling its ambassadors unless Iran releases the last three of nine Iranian employees of the British embassy arrested over the weekend.
Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel comments and Iran’s spats with UN nuclear inspectors have sparked anger in the West over the years, but the current crisis is evoking deeper criticism over Iran’s tactics and intentions. As Britain argued for the release of its employees, a commander of the Revolutionary Guard threatened that Iran would pull out of talks over its nuclear programme unless the European Union decided to “apologise” for interfering.
Foreign secretary David Miliband said Iran’s arrest of the embassy employees was “completely contrary to the sort of good political engagement that Iran says that it wants”.
European leaders are “very troubled and don’t really know what to do. They can’t excuse the Iranian regime, and they see that they have to try to avoid an Iranian bomb,” said Hubert Vedrine, France’s foreign minister from 1997 to 2002. “With the Iranian elections, there’s a feeling of discouragement that has settled in.”
The question is how to engage Iran and Ahmadinejad. The major powers rarely have been unified on this, but Europe and the US cannot fully ostracise Iran given the importance of the negotiations over its nuclear programme. A new round of trade sanctions could bolster Ahmadinejad’s claims of western intervention and rally the Iranian public, diverting attention from opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s pro-democracy movement.
On Thursday in Tehran, hard-line politicians renewed calls for Mousavi’s prosecution over the recent protests and ensuing violence. State-run Press TV reported that Iranian intelligence forces had arrested seven members of an anti-government group that had an “active role in provoking” postelection unrest.
A recent statement by the Group of Eight foreign ministers did not condemn Iran’s postelection crackdown and showed the divisions among industrialised nations on how to respond to Iran. France and Italy sought a toughly-worded statement. Russia essentially did not question Iran’s election results and opposed any outside effort at promoting democracy.
Iran’s future relations will depend on the “regime’s ability to recover from the deep separations that are currently present within its ranks”, says Wahid Abdul Magid, a Middle East affairs analyst at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “If they manage to somehow retain stability, then relations with other countries will remain as they were before the latest elections. It is also obvious that Ahmadinejad’s attitude toward the West will be even more acute.”
Ahmadinejad called off a visit this week to Libya, where President Muammar Gadafy had invited him to speak at the African Summit. Iranian TV reported Iranian spokesman Hassan Qashqavi as saying the president’s “busy work schedule” prevented him from attending.
Instead, the president stayed home and met Rafael Ramirez, the Venezuelan energy minister whose nation shares his anti-US stance. – (LA Times-Washington Post service)