Ehud Ya'ari: Regime Change in Iran: The Real Message Behind the Disputed Election

Ehud Ya'ari, one of Israel's most astute observers of the Middle East, offers an anaylsis of recent events in Iran that challenges some prevailing notions of Iran's power structure.
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At the moment, US President Barack Obama is not going to get very far in his dialogue with the Iranians. But I believe that, down the road, there will be the possibility of some understandings between the US, the Europeans and the Iranians. And it is the Arab states, not the Israelis, who are telling Obama to please not cut a deal with Iran behind their backs or at their expense.

Here's the real message behind Iran's disputed election
Ehud Ya'ari July 7, 2009 -

WHAT we have witnessed in Iran in recent weeks is a military coup conducted through the ballot boxes. Policymakers and analysts have been talking for a long time about the possibilities and prospects of a change of regime in Iran. Well, I have news for everybody — change of regime in Iran has taken place.

The re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term as Iran's President represents the emergence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp as a military dictatorship — pushing aside the clerics and mullahs. It's a new Iran in many ways. It's an Iran in which the Supreme Leader, despite what you will read in most of the Western press, is not the real victor in the election. He manipulated the elections in such a way as to have Ahmadinejad re-elected. Now, however, the Supreme Leader works for Ahmadinejad, rather than the other way around.

It's a new Iran because it's no longer the Islamic Revolution regime as we have known it since Khomeini took over in 1979. Ahmadinejad's Government is already 60 per cent Revolutionary Guard, and the Iranian parliament is 40 to 50 per cent ex-Revolutionary Guard officers. This election sees the takeover by this group and their allies completed.
Everybody has heard Ahmadinejad's statements — his regime's very clear views on eliminating Israel and the very aggressive and confrontational foreign policy.
The three other candidates, each in a different manner, objected to the way Ahmadinejad ran Iran's nuclear program, hinting very strongly that they did not necessarily see an advantage in the short-term acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons.
One of them suggested they negotiate with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and with Germany, and offer guarantees that the country would not be "going the military way".
This very fierce debate had never been heard in Iran before. But the debate is one point and the declared result of the election is something else — which is that two-thirds of Iranian voters are said to have supported Ahmadinejad. Those other voices — from within the ruling regime — will now be marginalised.
We have a few years in which to deter Iran from acquiring nuclear arms. The reason is Iran will never stage a nuclear "breakout" from the non-proliferation regime for a bomb or two. If Teheran goes for a breakout, it will only do so for an arsenal — it doesn't make sense otherwise.
The efforts are not just focused on uranium enrichment. They are building a heavy-water reactor in Arak for plutonium. But they are not yet at the point where they have enough material for an arsenal — at which time a political decision will be made about whether to build nuclear weapons or not. The Arab states have made it clear that if Iran has a bomb, they will follow.
Egypt has reignited its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, such as medical isotopes. Saudi Arabia will acquire nuclear weapons from the Pakistanis. It has a long-term understanding with Islamabad regarding this.
I think we in the Middle East are sentenced to a long period of ambiguity in which it's quite unclear what Iran's nuclear status is.
I believe that this ambiguity is the preferred policy of the Iranians at this point — playing their own game of ambiguity while moving as fast as they can to develop nuclear technologies in both enriched uranium and plutonium.
They want as soon as possible to be as close to the nuclear threshold as Japan currently is.
In the Middle East, Iran and its regional and nuclear ambitions define the only political and diplomatic game in town — overshadowing all other issues. It's the only game for the Arab states as much as for the Israelis.
At the moment, US President Barack Obama is not going to get very far in his dialogue with the Iranians. But I believe that, down the road, there will be the possibility of some understandings between the US, the Europeans and the Iranians. And it is the Arab states, not the Israelis, who are telling Obama to please not cut a deal with Iran behind their backs or at their expense.
Ehud Ya'ari is the Middle East commentator for Israel's Channel 2 Television and the author of eight books on Middle Eastern affairs.