Repères 08/01/08 - Mauvais temps pour Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ?

A President’s Defender Keeps His Distance
New York Times January 8, 2008

"A rift is emerging between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suggesting that the president no longer enjoys the ayatollah’s full backing, as he did in the years after his election in 2005...

...There are numerous possible reasons for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s loss of support, but analysts here all point to one overriding factor: the United States National Intelligence Estimate last month, which said Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure. The intelligence estimate sharply reduced the threat of a military strike against Iran, allowing the Iranian authorities to focus on domestic issues, with important parliamentary elections looming in March...

...Relations between the United States and Iran will always be difficult — as the encounter between Iranian speed boats and three United States Navy warships in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday made clear — but perhaps not impossible, many here are saying.

Liberal commentators, here and abroad, have long argued that hard-line policies in the West only strengthen hard-line politicians in Iran, and conversely that lowering the threat level enhances the position of moderates. With conservative politicians who supported Mr. Ahmadinejad in 2005 increasingly turning into his fiercest critics, and with Ayatollah Khamenei saying recently that Iran’s lack of contacts with the United States “does not mean that we will not have relations indefinitely,” the pundits would seem, for now, to be on the right track.


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