Attack Iran and you attack Russia
Pastor Dale Morgan
Attack Iran and you attack Russia*
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
The barely reported highlight of Russian President Vladimir Putin's
visit to Tehran for the Caspian Sea summit last week was a key
face-to-face meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that
essentially Putin and the Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to
nullify the George W Bush administration's relentless drive towards
launching a preemptive attack, perhaps a tactical nuclear strike,
against Iran. An American attack on Iran will be viewed by Moscow as an
attack on Russia.
But then, as if this were not enough of a political bombshell, came the
abrupt resignation of Ali Larijani as top Iranian nuclear negotiator.
Early this week in Rome, Larijani told the IRNA news agency that "Iran's
nuclear policies are stable and will not change with the replacement of
the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council [SNSC]." Larijani
will keep attending SNSC meetings, now as a representative of the
Supreme Leader. He even took time to remind the West that in the Islamic
Republic all key decisions regarding the civilian nuclear program are
made by the Supreme Leader. Larijani actually went to Rome to meet with
the European Union's Javier Solana alongside Iran's new negotiator,
Saeed Jalili, a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
(IRGC), just like President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
In itself, the Putin-Khamenei meeting was extraordinary, because the
Supreme Leader rarely receives foreign statesmen for closed talks, even
one as crucial as Putin. The Russian president, according to the
diplomatic source, told the Supreme Leader he may hold the ultimate
solution regarding the endlessly controversial Iranian nuclear dossier.
According to IRNA, the Supreme Leader, after stressing that the Iranian
civilian nuclear program will continue unabated, said. "We will ponder
your words and proposal."
Larijani himself had told the Iranian media that Putin had a "special
plan" and the Supreme Leader observed that the plan was "ponderable".
The problem is that Ahmadinejad publicly denied the Russians had
volunteered a new plan.
Iranian hawks close to Ahmadinejad are spinning that Putin's proposal
involves Iran temporarily suspending uranium enrichment in exchange for
no more United Nations sanctions. That's essentially what International
Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammad ElBaradei has been working on all
along. The key issue is what - in practical terms - will Iran get in
return. Obviously it's not the EU's Solana who will have the answer. But
as far as Russia is concerned, strategically nothing will appease it
except a political/diplomatic solution for the Iranian nuclear dossier.
US Vice President Dick Cheney - who even Senator Hillary Clinton now
refers to as Darth Vader - must be foaming at the mouth; but the fact is
that after the Caspian summit, Iran and Russia are officially entangled
in a strategic partnership. World War III, for them, is definitely not
on the cards.
Let's read from the same script
The apparent internal controversy on how exactly Putin and the Supreme
Leader are on the same wavelength belies a serious rift in the higher
spheres of the Islamic Republic. The replacement of Larijani, a realist
hawk, by Jalili, an unknown quantity with an even more hawkish
background, might spell an Ahmadinejad victory. It's not that simple.
The powerful Ali Akbar Velayati, the diplomatic adviser to the Supreme
Leader, said he didn't like the replacement one bit. Even worse:
regarding the appalling record of the Ahmadinejad presidency when it
comes to the economy, all-out criticism is now the norm. Another former
nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, told the Etemad-e Melli newspaper,
"The effects of the [UN] sanctions are visible. Our situation gets worse
day by day."
Ahmadinejad for the past two months has been placing his former IRGC
brothers-in-arms in key posts, like the presidency of the central bank
and the Oil, Industry and Interior ministries. Internal repression is
rife. On Sunday, hundreds of students protested at the Amir-Kabir
University in Tehran, calling for "Death to the dictator".
The wily, ultimate pragmatist Hashemi Rafsanjani, now leader of the
Council of Experts and in practice a much more powerful figure than
Ahmadinejad, took no time to publicly reflect that "we can't bend
people's thoughts with dictatorial regimes".
This week, the Supreme Leader himself intervened, saying, "I approve of
this government, but this does not mean that I approve of everything
they do." Under the currently explosive circumstances, this also amounts
to a political bombshell.
As if anyone needed to be reminded, the buck - or rial - stops with the
Supreme Leader, whose last wish on earth is to furnish a pretext for the
Bush administration to launch World War III. If Ahmadinejad now deviates
from a carefully crafted strategic script, the Supreme Leader may simply
get rid of him.