A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy With Iran by Trita Parsi

Author:Trita Parsi
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780300192360
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2012-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Mousavi then cleverly positioned Ahmadinejad in a no-win situation by declaring, “If [the swap is] put in place, all the efforts of thousands of scientists will go to the wind. If [it is] not put in place, the foundations will be laid for wide-ranging sanctions against Iran, and this is the result of a confrontational stance in foreign policy and the neglect of national interests and principles.” The Greens feared that the U.S. preferred to negotiate with a weak Ahmadinejad. Yet, they were not unhappy that negotiations took place. Rather, they were concerned about the nuclear-centric agenda that ignored the domestic situation in Iran. “This is really a nonissue in Iran. Iranians are all united on Iranian nuclear rights and they think that this is actually picking the wrong fight,” said Lake Forest University professor Ahmad Sadri. “The more the West, the EU governments, and U.S. with the prodding of Israel foreground the nuclear issue in Iran, the more they distract from the real issue.”59

The combination of pressure from conservatives and reformists alike prompted Supreme Leader Khamenei to withdraw his initial support for the proposal, according to a former Iranian diplomat. The argument that Iran was unjustifiably putting its trust in the hands of the West was powerful; no Iranian politician wanted to come across as soft or naïve when dealing with the West. Accordingly, even the proponents of the deal refrained from defending it in public. “Whether you can win over the various segments of the Iranian political establishment and public opinion, you have to make an effort to sell it,” Wittig said. “And this effort apparently was not really made.” But while Ahmadinejad’s opponents blasted the deal on its merits, it is not clear whether their intent was to scuttle it or simply to make its acceptance as costly as possible for Ahmadinejad. Mindful of the ongoing internal political fights and the brutality with which Ahmadinejad had responded to his many domestic opponents, it was natural that Ahmadinejad’s rivals were not going to permit him to score any victories that could boost his political standing in Iran. “No one wanted Ahmadinejad to get credit, particularly if this was a good deal for Iran,” a senior State Department official said. Emotions were running high. After all, Iran’s political elite was literally at war with itself. “They were so angry. They were so mad,” one of Mousavi’s advisers said of Ahmadinejad’s rivals. “I mean, their kids were in jail, their brothers were in jail.” Furthermore, in light of Ahmadinejad’s past hard-line stance and criticism against previous nuclear agreements between the West and Iran, his support for the swap provided his opponents with an opportunity to hurt him and his own hard-line base. “Everybody is getting into a payback situation,” ElBaradei said of the internal dynamics around the TRR deal. “Everybody is trying to outbid the other by turning that issue into a national pride issue.”60

The infighting in Iran had led to “massive political irresponsibility” in which all factions were “playing

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