Imagine the assignment: As a staffer at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), you have been tasked with the seemingly routine mission of keeping tabs on a country's progress toward a proposed agreement. Sounds easy enough; you might go back and read presidential statements, follow the ambassador's movements, and try to deduce a prospective reply. But if the country is Iran and the agreement is on sending uranium abroad for processing, you'd be out of luck. Since the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (the P5+1) first proposed the arrangement on October 1, pronouncements and leaks from Tehran have said everything from "Yes, we'll cooperate" to "No, we won't" to "Then again, maybe."
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Surely such waffling can't be a good sign, most will likely assume, reading it as yet another example of Iran's well rehearsed political dissonance. But such flip-flopping might be good news. For the first time, a real debate about the nuclear issue is going on in Iran, and conflicting statements may well be proof of progress.
Today, many of the world's leaders are, like the imagined staffer, at a loss as to Iran's true view. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei concluded during the first week of November that "the foreign policy apparatus in Iran has frozen." U.S. President Barack Obama echoed that fear on Nov. 9, saying that Iran was not "settled enough politically to make quick decisions on these issues." As a result, Obama emphasized 10 days later, "we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences."
It's easy to see how ElBaradei and Obama, among others, have arrived at their conclusion. Iran's usually bellicose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted on October 29 that "conditions have been prepared for international cooperation in the nuclear field" and his administration is "ready to cooperate." Its nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili expressed a desire on November 8 that the nuclear fuel agreement be "completed as quickly as possible." Armed forces chief of staff General Hassan Firouzabadi too supported the treaty on November 13. So did Iran's representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh. Iran's president and his officials understand fully the socioeconomic crisis Iran faces and seek to alleviate it by reconnecting with the West.
Yet while the executive branch of Iran's government may be at least tentatively on board, Ahmadinejad's opponents are condemning the nuclear deal. Such a stance serves their own political ambitions. Iran's Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, a presidential wanna-be, warned the public on October 24 that "Westerners are insisting to go in a direction that suggests cheating." Mir Hossein Mousavi critiqued the negotiations on October 29: "The discussions in Geneva were really surprising ... the hard work of thousands of scientists would be ruined." Not surprisingly, the country's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also cautioned against the deal. Speaking on November 4, the date marking 30 years since the U.S. embassy's seizure in Tehran and beginning of the diplomat hostage crisis, he noted, "When we carefully look at the situation, we notice that [the United States and its allies] are hiding a dagger behind their back." Not to be outdone, on November 8, another presidential hopeful, Mehdi Karroubi, accused Ahmadinejad's administration of abandoning national interests by negotiating with the IAEA.
But this may in fact be a good sign. Iran's top officials appear to be split over the nuclear issue because they are indeed. For the first time, the country's political leadership is engaging in a very public and agonized debate about the prudence, benefit, and drawback of diffusing a possible nuclear crisis through negotiation with perceived foreign opponents.
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