As published on shadow.foreignpolicy.com on June 18, 2009:
While the remarkable turmoil in the aftermath of Iran’s presidential election has captured the world’s attention, other news relating to Iran has slipped by relatively unnoticed. Last week, the head of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency told Congress that Iran and North Korea were cooperating on ballistic missiles. Diplomats in Vienna told the press that Iran had denied an IAEA request to install additional monitoring cameras at the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, and IAEA director-general Mohammad ElBaradei asserted that Iran desires nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, two Hizballah operatives were reportedly arrested in Azerbaijan, bearing Iranian passports.
The juxtaposition of these activities with the ferment in the streets of Tehran reveals two altogether different Irans struggling with one another — one marked by political dynamism and a hunger for justice, and another that is autocratic, bent on projecting power, and in which elected officials have little influence. To Iranians, this sort of conflict follows a familiar pattern in Iran’s history. To Westerners, it has been eye-opening. What is surprising to outside observers is not that Iran’s elections were rigged, but that their manipulation has elicited such a powerful response from the Iranian people.
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As published on shadow.foreignpolicy.com on June 11, 2009:
To most Westerners, Iranian politics is essentially a black box, making it difficult to know what to hope for out of Friday’s presidential elections. Knowledgeable commentators offer vastly differing opinions regarding the extent to which the results will reflect the will of the Iranian people versus that of Iran’s ultimate authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
It is widely agreed, however, that the elections are manipulated from start — (via the vetting of candidates) to finish (via the distortion of the results), and that whatever their outcome, true power on vital issues such as Iran’s nuclear program and relations with the United States remain strictly in the hands of Khamenei. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to conclude that the elections are irrelevant to U.S. interests. Their outcome, and the U.S. reaction to it, will be critical to the nuclear showdown with Iran.
The first thing that U.S. officials will be looking for from Friday’s election is what their outcome reveals about prospects for U.S.-Iran engagement. The incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, despite his quixotic outreach to the United States, has heaped scorn on his predecessors for pursuing “détente” with the West and has shown disdain for international cooperation. His challengers, meanwhile, have professed a desire for better relations with the West and lambasted Ahmadinejad for leaving Iran internationally isolated and friendless. Whatever else it may reflect about Iran, an Ahmadinejad victory would mean that Iran’s leaders are shaking their still-clenched fists at President Obama’s outstretched hand.
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As published on shadow.foreignpolicy.com on May 27, 2009:
Just as he is being criticized by those to his right for his emphasis on engagement with Iran, President Obama came under attack from the left, in the op-ed pages of the May 23 New York Times, for just the opposite. Unlike critics from the right who largely concur with the president’s stated objectives but disagree with his tactics, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett argue for a full about-face on Iran policy. Obama’s current policy, they assert, is doomed to fail unless he repudiates pressure and instead accommodates the Iranian regime and its nuclear aspirations, ostensibly in order to improve U.S.-Iran relations. The Leveretts both misread the Iranian regime and misapprehend U.S. interests; as a result, their proposed policy would neither lead to the rapprochement they seek nor prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
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