Tehran may run out of time By Philip Stevens, Financial Times

news-and-views There are two stories about Iran. The more familiar is the confrontation with the West over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. The more important may be the rising domestic opposition to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The puzzle is to work out how the two connect. The opening months of 2010 had been billed as a moment of truth in the dispute over the nuclear programme. Iran, the western powers said, would be perilously close by now to stepping over the threshold between uranium enrichment and the building of a bomb. Likewise, the clock would be running out on Barack Obama's diplomatic overtures to Tehran. Israel would be pressing on the US president the, dare one say it, option of airstrikes on Iran's nuclear installations. Western diplomats say that in so far as the above describes the general direction of travel, the nuclear story has not changed. Hence a recent flurry of activity to assemble support in the United Nations Security Council for a new sanctions resolution. Only the other day, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, upped the ante by warning China that it risks diplomatic isolation if it blocks tougher measures. The Pentagon confirmed that the US and its Gulf allies are strengthening missile and naval defences in the region. Conciliatory The threat of condemnation may explain the more emollient posture being struck by Ahmadinejad. Within the past few days, he has withdrawn earlier objections to a Russian-sponsored plan to ship abroad enriched uranium from Iran's present stockpile. The uranium would then be turned into (harmless) fuel rods for Iran's medical research reactor. Western governments are privately sceptical as to whether Ahmadinejad's comments mark a real change of heart. More likely, they believe, the Iranian president is playing for time a sentiment reinforced by Tehran's test launch of a satellite-carrying rocket. As it happens, though, the West has concluded for its own reasons that it has more time than it thought. As so often in this tale of ultimatums and deadlines, the promised moment of crisis has been pushed back. The clock is still ticking, diplomats will tell you, but it has been running rather slower than many predicted. For all Ahmadinejad's bluster about expanding Iran's nuclear programme by opening new enrichment sites, it seems the Iranians are having trouble with the existing facility at Natanz. The thousands of centrifuges producing low-level enriched uranium have an irritating habit of breaking down. Western diplomats say this in part reflects the success of international sanctions in blocking or delaying procurement of the right equipment. But there is also a growing suspicion that those in charge of the centrifuges are simply not very good at the engineering. The nuclear programme may also have been destabilised by America's disclosure last year that it was tracking a hitherto clandestine enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom. The net result? A mood among western officials with the exception of Israelis that they have more time than they thought. The other change mirrors the tumultuous events on the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities. The scale and determination of the opposition that grew from last year's rigged presidential elections have surprised the US and its allies. The West's first response is to applaud; its second to ask how it can continue to punish Iran for its nuclear programme without playing into the hands of a regime that defines itself by its enmity towards the US. The answer, I think, is that no one knows; just as no one is sure where the unrest is taking Iran. I caught a flavour of the dilemma by listening in last week on a private discussion among a group of experts many with family or other links in Iran assembled in London by Carnegie Europe, the Brussels-based think-tank sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment. Sinking ship There was broad agreement that Iran's Green Movement, which will take to the streets again this week on the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, had holed the regime below the waterline. Neither Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, nor Ahmadinejad could ever fully recover their authority. Yet no one in the group could be sure as to how long the regime might yet stay afloat. The present power structure could be swept away within a year in Cold War parlance, we could be at the beginning of 1989. On the other hand no one should underestimate the ruthless resolve of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard. As to the West's response, the US and European governments should be more outspoken in support for fundamental democratic and human rights in Iran; but recognise that overt foreign backing for the opposition movement would be turned against it by the regime. Nor would it be sensible for any new sanctions to punish ordinary Iranians by, say, blocking imports of refined fuel. Beyond that? There are no easy answers. Let's hope those engineers in Natanz keep on messing things up.

2010-02-07T02:21:52-07:00

The present power structure in Iran could be swept away within a year 5268 true

2010-02-07T02:21:52-07:00

NSR Tehran may run out of time By Philip Stevens, Financial Times

2010-02-07T02:21:52-07:00