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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (260190)	3/26/2008 5:43:32 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 281500

US moves towards engaging Iran By M K Bhadrakumar The coming few weeks are going to be critical in the standoff between the United States and Iran as the upheaval in the Middle East reaches a turning point. And all options do remain on the table, as the George W Bush administration likes to say, from military conflict to a de facto acceptance of Iran's standing as the region's dominant power. ... Bush's interviews with the government-supported Voice of America and Radio Farda, especially the latter, were a masterly piece in political overture. He held out none of the customary threats against Iran. This time, there was not even the trademark insistence that "all options are on the table". There were no barbs aimed at President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Least of all, there were no calls for a regime change in Tehran. Bush simply said something that he might as well have said about Saudi Arabia or Egypt. As he put it, "So this is a regime and a society that's got a long way to go [in reform]." Bush spoke of the evolution of the Iranian regime's character rather than its overthrow. The criticism, if any, of Iranian government policies approached nowhere near the diatribes of the past. There was none of the boastful claims that the US would work toward isolating Iran in its region and beyond. In fact, Bush acknowledged, "There's a chance that the US and Iran can reconcile their differences, but the [Iranian] government is going to have to make different choices. And one [such choice] is to verifiably suspend the enrichment of uranium, at which time there is a way forward." ... The Bush administration's priority will be to leave it to the next president in the White House to decide on any major reduction of troops in Iraq. But that means the Iraqi situation will remain in focus all through the period of the presidential campaign till November. The Bush administration needs to count on Tehran's tacit cooperation with the US to use its formidable influence with Iraqi groups. Belligerence toward Iran is hardly the way the Bush administration can realize this objective. But after a recent visit to Iran, prominent US author and commentator Selig Harrison wrote in The Boston Globe newspaper, "Tehran is seething over what it sees as a new 'divide and rule' US strategy designed to make Iraq a permanent US protectorate". He was referring to the current US strategy of building up rival Sunni militias - euphemistically called the "Sunni Awakening" - so as to fence in the Shi'ite-dominated government in Baghdad. ... But it has not been the kind of "regime change" the Bush administration sought. Khamenei has emerged more powerful than ever and Ahmadinejad has considerably strengthened his political standing. Khamenei has risen above nitpicking by senior clerical conservatives. Thus, from Washington's perspective, the new Iranian Parliament will have a preponderant share of "hardliners" and will be more radical and more "loyal" to the regime - to use Western cliches. Bush's interviews on the occasion of Nauroz are a grudging admission of the emergent political alignment in Tehran. The Bush administration is pragmatic enough to estimate the need to engage Iran. The real issue now is whether the emboldened leadership in Tehran shares the Bush administration's sense of urgency. It will carefully weigh its options. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced on Monday that Tehran "recently requested for membership" of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Ahmadinejad will be attending the SCO's summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Meanwhile, Iran's proposal to Russia to form a gas cartel is set to take off at a meeting of gas-producing countries in Moscow in June. ... Without Nabucco, the US strategy to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian gas supplies will remain a pipedream, and without Iranian gas, Nabucco itself makes little sense, while Nabucco will be Iran's passport to integration with Europe. Conceivably, Cheney, who takes a keen interest in energy diplomacy, would have kept Nabucco at the back of his mind in Ankara on Monday during his Middle East tour, on a day when Turkmenistan President Gurbangulu Berdimuhammedov also happened to be visiting the Turkish capital. An unnamed Turkmen official had earlier mentioned that Nabucco would be on the agenda of Berdimuhammedov's talks.