Tehran - Since his election in August 2005, Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has failed to keep most of his
promises, especially in the economic field.
The firebrand leader has at all costs however clung to his
political showpiece - Iran's decisive and unanimously-backed
atomic policy, which has set the Islamic republic on a collision
course with the West owing to suspicion it is aimed at developing
nuclear arms.
Therefore the resignations of six of his cabinet members - the
central bank chief, the ministers for cooperatives, mines and metals,
oil and social affairs as well as the vice-president and head of the
planning and budget organization - attracted little international
attention.
The resignation of his national security chief and top nuclear
negotiator Ali Larijani is however a major development, both at home
and abroad, and looks set to harm the momentum of his atomic
policies.
'How can Ahmadinejad claim that the nuclear matter is a national
issue and unanimously supported by 70 million Iranians if his top
nuclear negotiator resigns?' said a Western diplomat in Tehran.
Despite attracting global interest, state Iranian television only
carried Larijani's resignation as its third-ranked news item,
indicating perhaps the government's wish to play down its
significance domestically.
Speculation about Larijani's possible resignation due to
'irreconcilable differences' with Ahmadinejad had been heard since
the summer, but such whispers were consistently denied by the
government as 'rumours by the enemies of Iran.'
'With step-by-step efforts, Larijani tried hard to achieve a
diplomatic solution in the nuclear dispute and eventually avoid an
international crisis but Ahmadinejad made all these efforts null and
void by one single speech,' a UN official in Tehran said, referring
to the president's harsh rhetoric on the nuclear issue.
Larijani succeeded, in coordination with European Union foreign
policy chief Javier Solana and International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei, to finalise an agreement with the IAEA
last August on removing all technical ambiguities of the Iranian
nuclear programme.
The plan was supposed to serve as a suitable basis for the next
round of talks between Larijani and Solana, aimed at settling the
nuclear dispute through diplomatic channels and avoiding a third UN
Security Council resolution, harsher financial sanctions and even a
military confrontation.
Despite the plan, international calls for harsher measures against
Iran increased, mainly due to Ahmadinejad's uncompromising statements
on the nuclear issue and also his comments rejecting Israel as a
sovereign state and denying the Holocaust.
'The fact is that currently we are more than ever internationally
threatened and the number of our enemies is increasing - until
yesterday there were only the US and Britain, now also France has
joined the two with the same heat,' said Larijani's moderate
predecessor Hassan Rowhani, blaming the president.
May political analysts also accuse Ahmadinejad - unlike Larijani -
of not having realised the full significance and possible dangerous
consequences for Iran of a Security Council resolution, which the
president once dismissed as nothing more than 'a torn piece of paper.
The swift appointment of deputy foreign minister Saeid Jalili as
successor to technocrat Larijani indicates that the resignation had
been known in advance.
Little is known about Jalili except that he is one of the new
faces in the foreign ministry and has a promising diplomatic career.
Even local photographers had difficulty finding a file picture of
the new man, whose job might even be more sensitive than that of the
foreign minister.
Jalili is expected to lead the Iranian delegation in the talks
with Solana on October 23 in Rome, although the National Security
Council has not yet confirmed this. An alternative would be
Larijani's deputy, Javad Vaeidi, who also leads Iran in the talks
with the IAEA.
'Larijani's resignation and Jalili's appointment will have more
internal rather than external impact as the nuclear issue is a state
matter and therefore decided within a collective led by Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,' a political observer in
Tehran said.
'More important is how Ahmadinejad wants to explain to the public
at home why his one of his most important men quit the president's
administration and a why political newcomer is taking charge of one
of the country's most sensitive jobs,' he added.
Observers believe that Jalili is expected to adopt the same line
with Solana as his predecessor, but many question whether he will
have the same charisma and diplomatic skills as Larijani.
The most recent reported statement by Jalili on nuclear issues
came during a meeting last month in Tehran with Aleida Guevera, the
daughter of the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevera.
'It is very unfortunate that a country (the US) which itself has
atomic bombs and even used them wants to deprive another country from
peaceful use of nuclear technology,' Jalili told Guevera, more or
less echoing the standard rhetoric by Tehran on the matter.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
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