Iran’s Great Game

Newsweek ^ | July 3, 2008 | Michael Hirsch

[Schnucki]

In the famous fairy tale, the Persian Queen Scheherazade strings out stories for a thousand and one nights until her matricidal husband, the king, finally accepts her in his household. On Tuesday, as I sat listening to Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's genial foreign minister, come up with yet another enticing response to the latest Western proposal for halting the country's alleged nuclear weapons program, I wondered again whether Tehran was taking a tactical cue from its ancient forebear. Is Iran playing the West the way Scheherazade played the king, by making occasional agreeable noises—thereby sowing self-doubt among its adversaries—and avoiding conclusive ultimatums? Is Tehran endlessly prolonging the talks until an exhausted United States and Europe are forced to accept its uranium enrichment program?

It's a serious question, one that could mean the difference between war and peace in the Middle East. On one hand, Mottaki's positive comments to American reporters at a lunch at Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York suggested that his country is suddenly willing to negotiate a halt to enrichment—at least temporarily—on the basis of the latest package of incentives offered by the West on June 14. His comments came the same day as similar remarks made by Mottaki's more powerful patron, Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Mottaki referred to a "new process" and a more "constructive" mood. Velayati, in widely noted comments to a hard-line Iranian newspaper, seemed to criticize President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other right-wingers. "Those who are agitating against our interests want that we reject the offer. As a consequence, it is in our interests to accept it," he said.

[Diogenesis]

[Chode]