Print

Mail

wiki links

Tehran will get aggressive over nuclear issue: experts

"The right-wing now have total control. They are not necessarily the kind of people who want a deal."

an unnamed diplomat

Iran's dramatic shift to the right spells trouble for already tense nuclear negotiations, analysts and diplomats said, with the Islamic regime now expected to take a far more aggressive stance over its ambition to possess sensitive enrichment technology.

While the victory of Revolutionary Guards veteran Mahmood Ahmadinejad has come as a shock, equally damaging to the prospects of the kind of deal Britain, France and Germany are seeking is the humiliating defeat and uncertain future for moderate cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

"I think Rafsanjani wanted a deal. Up to now he has been allowed to handle the issue, and I believe he truly wanted to go down in history as the man who solved the problem with the United States," a senior Western diplomat told reporters. "He was using the nuclear issue as a bargaining chip. It would have taken a long time, but I think the chance was there."

But in the wake of such a stunning loss at the polls, Rafsanjani's ability to employ a moderating influence within the regime hierarchy -- and particularly with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- looks in doubt.

"The right-wing now have total control. They are not necessarily the kind of people who want a deal," the diplomat said, speaking on condition that he not be named.

At the core of the nuclear issue is Iran's ambition to make its own nuclear fuel by enriching uranium, a process that can also be used to make the core of a nuclear bomb. Iran insists it only wants to generate electricity.

Iran has frozen its fuel cycle work and has entered into long-term talks with the EU-3, who are trying to convince Iran to abandon such activities altogether in a "Libya-style deal" that offers incentives in return.

Rafsanjani, an ex-president and savvy deal-maker, has stuck by Iran's suspension and by the talks -- as has his key loyalist and top negotiator Hassan Rowhani.

The president is only Iran's number-two on paper, and often lower than that in practice. But Ahmadinejad would bolster the ranks of right-wingers who argue that Iran has a "legitimate right" to press on with nuclear work and, more importantly, should do so regardless of the consequences.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said he hoped "the newly elected Iranian authorities will continue the work that we European diplomats began with the aim of suspending nuclear activities."

But Ahmadinejad has complained that "those who are handling the talks are terrified, and before they even sit down at the negotiating table they retreat 500 kilometers."

"A popular and fundamentalist government will quickly change that," he said last week, boasting that "no country, no matter how powerful they are, can attack Iran."

"We spend US$30 billion on imports, and this is an immense means of pressure in negotiations. It is we who should impose our conditions on them and not they on us," he said in a broadcast.
This story has been viewed 1500 times.