Strife-torn Iran needs soft touch from U.S.

The September deadline set by President Obama for Iran to restart talks about its nuclear program is rapidly approaching.

The president said in July that the world couldn’t “wait indefinitely” and allow Iran time to develop a nuclear weapon. If Iran didn’t engage by September, Obama said, “further steps” would be needed.

Israel, whose existence is regularly denounced by Iranian leaders, is pushing for harsher sanctions (and maybe military action). Congress is weighing passage of the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, which would punish countries that supply Iran with 40 percent of its gasoline and diesel.

But given the incredible political drama that has been playing out in Tehran since rigged June elections, the White House and Congress need to rethink earlier deadlines. Iran’s political elite is still convulsed in internal power struggles, whose results aren’t clear yet. The worst thing the administration could do would be to take action that strengthens Iran’s ultra-hard-liners while making the United States look weak.

To understand Obama’s options, it’s necessary to look backward. Before the disputed Iranian elections, the Obama team sent a letter to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The letter reportedly laid out a framework to resolve the question marks over Iran’s nuclear program and establish cooperation on regional issues.

The letter was in keeping with Obama’s campaign pledge to “engage” with Iran to reshape relations. Unconfirmed reports say the Iranians responded without commitment.

Security policy

Then came Iran’s presidential elections, whose rigging sent millions of protesters into the streets. No further response has arrived from Iran since the vote, say top U.S. officials. Indeed, it isn’t even clear at this point who really controls security policy in Tehran.

What is clear is the vicious struggle for power going on within Iran’s ruling circles. An astonishing show trial is in progress targeting scores of intellectuals, along with political reformers (whose leaders were cheated of victory in the balloting). The whole affair, in which the accused make televised “confessions” of conspiring to counterrevolution, looks like something out of the 1950s Soviet Union.

Last week, Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final, rebuffed efforts by hard-line Revolutionary Guards officials to portray top reform leaders as Western tools, and prosecute or even execute them. The very next day President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the election “victor” and front man for the Rev Guards militia, said those political leaders should be tried.

“Ahmadinejad’s remarks are virtually a slap in the face of Khamenei,” said Abbas Milani, director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University. We don’t know whether Khamenei will cave, he said, permitting the Revolutionary Guards to carry out a virtual military coup and take charge of security policy. Nor do we know how Khamenei will react if reformist leaders refuse to give up their cause or to drop charges that imprisoned protesters have been tortured and raped.

Either way, the supreme leader’s strength will be weakened. And, given internal fissures within the Revolutionary Guards and the conservative camp, there is an outside possibility that Ahmadinejad may be forced out.

None of this guarantees a change in Iran’s nuclear policy: All political leaders support Tehran’s nuclear program in public. However, the internal Iranian political turmoil has several key implications for Obama’s Iran policy.

“Any attempt to negotiate with them at this moment is futile,” Milani said. That’s because we don’t know who is really in charge of nuclear policy or who will be in the future.

Government in convulsion

The Iranian regime may agree to talks in order to stall. But, Milani said, such talks won’t yield results because a government in convulsion cannot make decisions. Moreover, should the West renew such talks while Iran’s internal struggle continues, this may be construed as a betrayal by Iranians who voted and protested for change.

X Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.