Oct 20, 2007, 13:02 GMT
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.
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