Memarian’s piece draws on Iranian sources to describe the political context of, and gauge reactions to, Mottaki’s firing and his interim replacement by Ali Akbar Salehi, until now [...]]]>
Memarian’s piece draws on Iranian sources to describe the political context of, and gauge reactions to, Mottaki’s firing and his interim replacement by Ali Akbar Salehi, until now the head of Iran’s nuclear agency.
Down at the end, Memarian speaks to the Carnegie Endowment’s Karim Sadjadpour, who says the move is unlikely to affect Iran’s ongoing diplomacy with the West:
Analysts believe Ahmadinejad’s surprise move is very unlikely to affect the negotiations, as Mottaki had little say in the country’s major foreign policy positions over the past five years.
“Mottaki’s firing will have little substantive impact on Iranian foreign policy,” Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, told IPS. “The Iranian foreign minister doesn’t formulate policy. It’s the equivalent of the State Department spokesperson being replaced.”
“Salehi is much smarter and smoother than Mottaki and may prove more effective at creating divisions in the international community,” Sadjadpour added. “The Iranian foreign minister’s job these days is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. It’s ugly no matter how you try and sell it.”
I covered some other reactions yesterday — mostly speculative at this point, and unlikely to become any more certain before the upcoming round of negotiations in Istanbul next month.
]]>Duss also takes note of another great point from Sadjadpour: [...]]]>
Duss also takes note of another great point from Sadjadpour: Just as neoconservative Iran hawks can’t have it both ways — boosting the Green movement and calling for bombing Iran — those Arab leaders who call for a U.S. attack on Iran probably don’t care a whit about democracy in Iran either. (And why should they? Their countries aren’t exactly democracies nor do they care what their own citizens/subjects think).
In fact, a democratic Iran would probably be bad news for these Gulf dictatorships.
Sadjadpour (emphasis by Duss):
The WikiLeaks revelations make clear that Arab officials believe Iran to be inherently dishonest and dangerous. The feeling is probably mutual. But they hide perhaps a more interesting issue, namely what type of Iranian government would actually best serve Gulf Arab interests.
President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad and the Islamic Republic may be loathed, but equally the advent of a more progressive, democratic Iran would enable Tehran to emerge from its largely self-inflicted isolation and begin to realise its enormous potential. In the zero-sum game of Middle Eastern politics, a democratic Iran would pose huge challenges to Persian Gulf sheikhdoms.
The irony that someone like Benjamin Wienthal, who’s at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, doesn’t recognize this in his National Review post says something about how the hawkish agenda drives neoconservatives — and not utopian notions of freedom and democracy.
Weinthal writes:
While Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Oman have long privately conveyed such warnings to diplomats, they never had the courage to flex their muscles in public.
Right! And that’s because these are dictatorships, and these Arab leaders are wildly out of step with their publics.
Neoconservatives, being neoconservatives, will gather allies in their campaign for war with Iran wherever they can find them.
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