Thomas P.M. Barnett

ARTICLE: "In Iran, Two Power Centers Vie Amid Standoff Over Nuclear Fuel," by Bill Spindle, Wall Street Journal, 13 October 2006, p. A6.

Great piece by Spindle. Our education on Iran grows by the day.

... unlike Kim Jong Il's North Korea, Iran isn't a one-man dictatorship. Contrary to a common view of an Iran as being firmly in the hands of its fiery president, Mahmoud Adhadinejad, Iran is torn by competing power centers that wage a daily battle for supremacy.
On one side is a mostly youthful group of fundamentalist hard-liners, typified by Mr. Ahmadinejad, who are determined to keep the revolutionary spirit vibrant. On the other side is Iran's elite class of clerics, aging former revolutionaries and businessmen--also deeply conservative and wary of reform, but far less interested in confronting the world and risking the isolation of their country.

Typifying this less-recognized power center is Iran's tough but suave chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani. He is a fluent English speaker whose appointment to the critical negotiating role was seen inside Iran as a way to counterbalance the mercurial president.

Mr. Ahmadinejad tries to shake things up and sometimes succeeds, says Nassar Hadian, a political-science professor at Tehran University, "but the entire establishment of Iran is opposed to him."

Ever see any academic quotes like that from a North Korean poli sci prof? That's what I mean by differentiating between authoritarianism (a regime that wants to control politics) and totalitarianism (a regime that wants to control everything).

And this article really speaks to that difference on a political basis: two opposed camps within the conservative ranks, both of whom want a bigger role for Iran in world affairs but "have quite different ideas about how to achieve it and about just what kind of role Iran should play in the world."

Ahmadinejad's group wants confrontation with the West, knowing it has New Core pillars China and Russia on its side.

But Larijani's group puts emphasis on "maintaining economic and political ties to the West, and perhaps even opening some sort of dialogue with the U.S."

Wouldn't you like to put Ahadinejad on the spot by actually giving him a dialogue the establishment conservatives force him to engage?

Confrontation with the West works wonders for Ahmadinejad in this struggle with the establishment. As another Iranian political analyst puts it, "He's tried to provoke a crisis in order to achieve better control."

Of course, the conservative-in-chief is Ayatollah Khamenei himself, who appointed Larijani to run Iran's nuclear negotiations in his capacity as Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.

Remember, Khamenei backed protege Larijani in the 2005 prez election--against Ahmadinejad. Why? Larijani is the consummate insider blue-blood. Ahmadinejad is more of a Gingrich.

Most interesting to me: while Ahmadinejad talks up Chavez as a model, Larijani talks up India.

India is often lost in any discussion on Iran, when it shouldn't be. To the elite, India is the big brother, not Russia or China. India is the Persian Gulf power (yes, I wrote that) for whom Iran feels the most identification.

Yes, Ahmadinejad seems in the driver's seat right now, but...

... the struggle for power over Iran's policy has hardly ended. And as always, it's taking place in the larger context of the establishment's attempts to keep Mr. Ahmadinejad in check.

The story then ends with a bit of insider intrigue recently engineered by Rafsanjani, which again indicates how and why Iran is so different from Kim's North Korea.

Unlike North Korea, which should go away, Iran is here to stay.