No tanto entusiasmo por el nuevo presidente iraní.

West must temper its enthusiasm for Iran’s new president.

By Martin Indyk - June 16, 2013

Embracing Hassan Rohani too warmly could hinder nuclear negotiations, writes Martin Indyk

 

El nuevo presidente iraní.

The surprise election of Hassan Rohani to the Iranian presidency shines a hopeful ray of sunlight through the darkening storm clouds of western relations with Iran. But rushing to embrace Mr Rohani could end up being exactly the wrong strategy for the US and its European partners to adopt in an environment so permeated by mistrust.
Mr Rohani’s victory represents a triumphant resurrection of the reformist movement that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had seemingly suppressed after the last presidential elections four years ago. It sends a clear signal to the ruling clerics that a majority of Iranians have had enough of sanctions-induced austerity and isolation.
Mr Rohani has a long record of association with the moderate camp in Iranian politics, serving as national security adviser to the pragmatic President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and, subsequently, the reformist President Mohammad Khatami. In that capacity, he headed Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) a decade ago, and agreed to suspend Iran’s enrichment programme during that period. For that he earned the scorn of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad for supposedly making unreciprocated concessions that delayed Iran’s nuclear programme.

Little wonder that after eight years of Mr Ahmedinejad’s sly, defiant tomfoolery, many in the west see in Mr Rohani the hope of a way out of the nuclear impasse.
We should be careful, however, not to let our hopes get ahead of realities. The sanctions are indeed hurting; the Iranian people want an end to their isolation; and by winning a majority in the first round Mr Rohani has received a resounding mandate for change. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remains very much in command. Indeed, this election may have solidified his reign: rather than protesting against him as they did in such massive numbers four years ago, the people were celebrating in the streets after this election. And his radical regime now has a moderate, democratically elected president to cloak his own extremism and paranoia.
An early test of the supreme leader’s intentions will be in Syria where Iran and its Hizbollah militia are heavily involved in brutally suppressing the opposition to Bashar al-Assad’s regime. It is unlikely that Mr Rohani’s election is the harbinger of any moderation on that front. As the US, Britain and France become more involved with arming and training the Syrian opposition, the trend is likely to be more in the direction of confrontation than reconciliation with the west.
But there is another reason for a deliberate approach. A too warm embrace of the new president could heighten the paranoia of the supreme leader and make it impossible for Mr Rohani to push for concessions in the nuclear negotiations – if that is his intention – that would brand him as suspect in Mr Khamenei’s eyes. We have a precedent for that in the way the supreme leader emasculated Ayatollah Mohammad Khatami – the last reformist president with a popular mandate – when President Bill Clinton tried to engage him and reciprocate his interest in a constructive dialogue. Giving the new Iranian president time to establish himself, listening carefully to how he proposes to proceed with the nuclear file, and never giving the supreme leader the impression that we are trying to go around him, is therefore a wiser approach.
But time is not on the side of a negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear file. Iran’s nuclear programme is fast approaching a breakout capability in which, perhaps by the end of 2013, it will have the ability to achieve bomb-grade enrichment of its stockpile within two to three months of a decision to go for it. That would constitute a crossing of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s red line and would come close to challenging Mr Obama’s own commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
The west, therefore, needs to proceed with all deliberate speed, recognising in Mr Rohani’s victory an opportunity that we cannot afford to squander by a hasty embrace based on wishful thinking but also with an ear attuned to the ever-louder ticking of the nuclear clock.
The writer is director of the foreign policy programme at the Brookings Institution and co-author of ‘Bending History, Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy’
FUENTE: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fc999b38-d69e-11e2-9214-00144feab7de.html#axzz2WUosxHuy