Jennifer flagged the Washington Post report about the Iranian leaders’ indecision on the nuclear deal. One would only wish there were a fight inside the regime, with sensible people wanting the deal and radicals opposing it. In fact, this is the customary passion play of the Islamic Republic of Iran. One emissary appears reasonable, another gives a fiery speech, a third tries to mediate, a fourth criticizes the others, a fifth calls on the Supreme Leader to intervene, a sixth asks for time, and a seven ends up blaming the West for discord.

The result is what matters, and the result is as follows: First, the U.S. set a deadline for Iran to answer to the deal. Iran ignored the deadline. The U.S. said the deadline was not so stringent (as Abe noted yesterday). Second, the three powers involved in the negotiations agreed to the proposal. Now Iran knows it got that much and wants to negotiate more.

Iran’s game has always been to buy time. This latest dance is no different. And it looks as though Iran’s interlocutors will not behave significantly better this time either — instead of making good on their threats and ultimatums, they’ll come back with more offers, more incentives, more compromise, and more time for Iran to gain through talks.

Iran’s leadership is not divided on the end-game — getting nuclear weapons — and the fact that contradictory messages appear to come out of Tehran does not mean that there are divisions. Seeing any infighting serves the purpose of those who argue that there is a sensible, reasonable, pragmatic, down-to-earth element in the regime we can do business with.

Not so — but I would not hold my breath about anyone in Washington acknowledging that yet.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 1:03 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.