Internet Anthropologist Think Tank: Iranian regime intentions

Saddam Hussein in Cairo after fleeing there fo...

UPDATED: 12.23.09

Iranian regime intentions
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

One of the givens of the Middle East's dense diplomacy is Shiite Iran's enduring hostility toward the Taliban, the radical Sunni movement whose fall from power in 2001 was welcomed nowhere as much as in Tehran.

"It is better for Iran if America is entangled in Afghanistan with the Taliban," said Abulfazl Amooei, a political analyst for the Hamshahri diplomatic magazine, which closely reflects the views of Iran's Islamic hard-liners.

For years, Iran's power in the Middle East was held in check through a combination of U.S. sanctions and a long war in the 1980s with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, whose regime received aid from the United States and Sunni Arab nations that feared the growing influence of the Islamic Republic and the potential expansion of its hard-line theological revolution.

( Then USA took out Iraq and the Taliban? Two of Iran's biggest enemys.
Iran was just barely able to fight Iraq to a stand still after 7yrs,
USA took Iraq in a couple of weeks, and Iran is scared. G)

Just as worrying for Sunni Arab governments in the Middle East, Ahmadinejad's tough talk against the U.S. and Israel has won Iran unexpected and growing popularity in the Sunni Muslim world. Tehran now sees itself poised to become the dominant power broker in the Mideast and deeper into Asia.

....we should admit that Iran, bearing in mind the circumstances in the region, is not satisfied if the Taliban is totally banished from Afghanistan. And the status quo in Afghanistan is the best for our foreign policy," said Amooei, the political analyst.

Mohammad Kazem Anbarlouee, former head of a conservative Islamic faction in the parliament and editor of Resalat, a hard-line newspaper, described Iran's strategy in Afghanistan as a delicate balancing act between two enemies: the Taliban on the one hand, and the U.S....

Hamidreza Babaei, a deputy speaker of Iran's parliament:
"We regard the American administration as our enemy. We also regard the Taliban as our enemy.

SOURCE:

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That was 2007 lets look at today:

Iran's president on Tuesday dismissed a year-end deadline set by the Obama administration and the West for Tehran to accept a U.N.-drafted deal to swap enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. The United States warned Iran to take the deadline seriously.

Ahmadinejad's remarks underscored Tehran's defiance in the nuclear standoff - and also sought to send a message that his government has not been weakened by the protest movement sparked by June's disputed presidential election. He spoke a day after the latest opposition protest by tens of thousands mourning a dissident cleric who died over the weekend.

The international community can give Iran "as many deadlines as they want, we don't care," Ahmadinejad said in a speech to thousands of supporters in the southern city of Shiraz.

"We told you that we are not afraid of sanctions against us, and we are not intimidated," he said, addressing the West.

In Paris, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the chances of finding a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff with Iran were "never very significant" and that in the "worst case," France will bring up the issue of new sanctions on Tehran.

( Geeze, France's "worst case" is sanctions? Guess their not going to bomb. G )

Under the deal brokered by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency last month, most of Iran's low-enriched uranium would be shipped abroad, where it would be enriched further to produce fuel rods. The rods would then be returned to Iran for use in a research reactor in Tehran, but it would not be possible to enrich them further to a high enough level to build a bomb.

SOURCE:

Note the 2007 article is context for the one yesterday, posted above.

Gerald

Anthropologist