Vakil writes:

The emergence of a reformist movement with mass support forced the clerical elite, Mr Rafsanjani included, to acknowledge the link between demography and democracy. With 70 per cent of the population under the age of 30 and with no memory of the revolution or its nationalising ideology, the government recognised that it was sitting on a ticking time bomb.

Yes, but as Mahan Abedin notes, there reaction was more than a little different than Vakil suspects. The Iranian government clearly recognizes the problem it now faces (which lies, I would argue, with far more than mere demographics) and has attempted until recently to co-opt any attempts for genuine reform by providing a false outlet for political frustration in the largely impotent reformist movement. As Joe has noted and I fully agree, Khatami has behaved more or less like a labor boss who's been bought off by the mob.

Mr Rafsanjani's re-emergence signifies an essential and often overlooked change in Iran's power structure - a weakening in the position of the rahbar or supreme leader.

It is common knowledge that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, did not want Mr Rafsanjani to re-enter the political scene. Instead, he wanted a unified conservative bloc of support behind the more popular conservative candidate, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the former police chief. Mr Rafsanjani is proving to be a thorn in Ayatollah Khamenei's side.

Excuse me, but Rafsanjani was and I believe still is until he becomes president the chairman of the Expediency Council, which is involved in mediating disputes between the Majlis and the Council of Guardians. And that's just his official position, God only knows what he does in the smokey backrooms. Not only is he already on the political scene, he's at the center of it!

That said, there's a rivalry of sorts that exists between Khamenei and Rafsanjani that is more a squabble among thieves than anything else over who gets to wield the most power. Whereas Qalibaf and his comtemporaries would essentially be a yes-man for Khamenei, Rafsanjani is more than capable enough for doing things on his own initiative ... such as ordering the murder of politicians, cultural figures, artists, and journalists that he deems to be insufficiently Islamic. However, there's a big difference between a conflict over personalities and a conflict over policy and at least as far as how they view the US there is little if any difference between the two men simply on the basis of their respective histories.

Moreover, Mr Rafsanjani's presence in the election complicates the outcome. Even Dr Mustafa Moin, the former culture and higher education minister and a reformist candidate, is considered more palatable to some conservatives than Mr Rafsanjani. If elected, Dr Moin could be overpowered by the conservatives who dominate every institution, including the parliament. Such a scenario would replicate the second term of President Mohammad Khatami, the outgoing reformist president.

Meaning that Moin talks a good game, makes nice with the Europeans, and keeps the US divided on how to deal with Iran in the hopes that Moin and his aides are going to implement some Gorbachev-style reforms. This is basically what happened with Khatami, but I suspect that even some European diplomats have figured out that song and dance number by now. Either that, or the hardliners figured out that as long as they have a friendly-looking president they don't need to have a reformist parliament ...

As a born-again pragmatist, Mr Rafsanjani has abandoned his revolutionary ideals for national-interest oriented objectives. Potential rapprochement with the US - an anathema for many traditional revolutionary adherents who fear American interference in Iranian affairs - is an idea Mr Rafsanjani has flirted with for years and is now one of the main pillars of his campaign. Increased economic liberalisation is another policy issue that reveals the ideological divide between Mr Rafsanjani and the clerical apparatchiks. Both of these issues are not only on his agenda but critical for gaining mass popular support.

It's really hard to talk about "mass popular support" in a situation where it seems highly likely that 50% of the electorate is likely to even bother to vote. The polls appear to be mostly manufactured for the purposes of suckering gullible Westerners, which is about the best way to explain how the Iranian electoral process works. While most authoritarian regimes have some kind of staged elections for decorative purposes to reaffirm the authority of the state, the Iranians are one of the few to go to such lengths as to make it look like a real show, all the better to sucker Western diplomats. Something that seems to get lost amongst all this theater, however, is the fact that the mullahs are letting only 6 candidates run out of more than 1,000 potentials solely due to a Stalinist-esque litmus test for ideological purity. Anybody they thought who might pose any real challenge to the system was ommitted from being on the ballot - anyone who's there, regardless of their quaint virtues, is not going to pose a fundamental challenge to the regime.

Greg then proceeds to cite Ken Pollack and Ray Takeyh in Foreign Affairs as saying the following:

The pragmatists among Khomeini's heirs believe that the regime's survival depends on a more judicious international course. Thanks to them, Iran remained a regular player in the global energy market even at the height of its revolutionary fervor. Today, these realists gravitate around the influential former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and occupy key positions throughout the national security establishment. One of the group's leading figures, Muhammad Javad Larijani, a former legislator, argues, "We should not have what I would call an obstinate policy toward the world." Instead, the pragmatic conservatives have tried to develop economic and security arrangements with foreign powers such as China, the European Union, and Russia. In reaction to the United States' overthrow of two regimes on Iran's periphery--in Afghanistan and Iraq--they have adopted a wary but moderate stance. Admonishing his more radical brethren, Rafsanjani, for example, has warned, "We are facing a cruel and powerful U.S. government, and we have to be cautious and awake.

That all sounds very well and good if one doesn't accept what Iran's "moderate stance" has consisted of over the last several years, particularly with regard to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, VEVAK, and other key areas of Iran's national security establishment that are controlled by Rafsanjani and Co. Entirely apart from the nuclear issue, here's a short list from memory:

• Allowing key al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden's family and Zarqawi, to find refuge in eastern Iran following the defeat of the Taliban.

• The Karine A incident.
  
• Taking in the remnants of Ansar al-Islam and giving them sanctuary, medical treatment, and additional training before sending them back into Iraq to kill American troops.

*Enabling the May 2003 bombings in Riyadh and Casablanca.

• More specifically on the topic of Iraq, US News and World Report got ahold of a long list of raw intel on Iranian "meddling" that we covered here at length which included a plot to kill Paul Bremer, putting up a bounty of $500 for every US soldier killed, ect.

• The more recent plot by Iranian "diplomat" Mohammed Reza Doust to assassinate Hosni Mubarak using Egyptian VEVAK agent Mahmud Aid (Eid) Dabbus. Dabbus's trial revealed that he had also given Iran detailed information about the oil installations in Yanbu prior to a shooting rampage in May 2004 by Saudi al-Qaeda, suggesting a possible Iranian connection to that attack.

So where exactly does that leave us with regard to our wonderful "pragmatist" Rafsanjani and the "moderate" stance that he and his fellows have adopted? As I've noted before, there are three possibilities here: either he is unaware that this is going on, he is impotent to stop it, or he is involved in such activities or at least gives them his blessing. Now I know that a lot of the self-declared "realists" (Pollack, et al.) tend to reject these arguments, assuming that they bother to address them at all for fear of the policy consequences that arise if Iran is at the heart of all this crap. These arguments are usually either the claims that Iran wants a "stable Shi'ite government" in Iraq or that if Iran wanted to turn up the heat in Iraq they could certainly do so.

Both claims, however, ignore the complexities of Iraq. The biggest winner of a stable Shi'ite government in Iraq is not Khamenei but Sistani who, through his explicit rejection of a merger between religion in government seems likely to become one of the most prominent religious leaders worldwide (on par with the Pope, the Dalai Lama, etc.) if things in Iraq turn out well. Anybody think that Iran wants a man whose very existence poses a direct challenge to the ideological basis for the regime becoming that powerful? Or wants to entertain the possibility that dissident clerics like Montazeri will set up shop in An Najaf? How do you suppose the Iranians think that all these Najafi clerics are going to regard the US, whose invasion of Iraq has enabled their rise to power? How any one can conclude that this is in the Iranian regime's best interest is beyond me and it's certainly beyond the current regime in Tehran.

As to the issue that Iran can "turn up the heat" in Iraq far more than it currently is, to hold this up in order to "refute" claims of Iranian involvement in the insurgency leaves me completely unconvinced. Certainly Iran can turn up the heat, but doing so would almost certainly elicit a nasty response from Washington. Turning up the heat works both ways and the US could easily initiate start sponsoring MEK, Kurdish, Khuzestani (ethnic Arab), Azeri, and Baluchi violence against Tehran. Moreover, the whole basis of the Iranian strategy with regard to Iraq is one of "managed chaos" and they certainly don't want to enable the insurgency beyond their ability to manipulate it, particularly when such actions might result in US retaliation against them. No, the current strategy of Ling Chi appears quite capable of achieving Iran's geo-political ambitions as we're now seeing in public opinion polls.

So if this is a "moderate stance," then what the hell is an "extreme stance" supposed to look like?

Greg then concludes with regard to Rafsanjani:

No, he's not going to be our best buddy. Far from it. He'll be canny as hell, and the danger is of course being snookered by his economic 'pragmatism' and such so as to let the Iranians have their cake and eat it too (get economic benefits while still pursuing their nuclear program and not making any real re-adjustments on their support for terror etc etc). But if we approach this dialogue like sharks too, which I trust we will, there could be some very interesting areas of mutual interest to explore indeed. It's certainly at least worth a try.

Quite a few nations have been attempting to pursue a diplomatic solution with regard to the issues of both the Iranian nuclear program and support for international terrorism. The French, for instance, even went as far as arresting the MEK politburo for the purposes of swapping them with the Iranians for Saif al-Adel, Saad bin Laden, et al. Nothing came of it, just as I suspect very little is going to come out of these wonderfully multilateral negotiations that Pollack and others have been championing. Greg suggests we focus on issues of mutual interest, but the problem is that determining what those issues are depends a great deal on what you regard as the Iranian regime's interests in certain areas, such as the stability of Iraq, international terrorism, the status of the Persian Gulf, etc. To put it quite simply, my and Pollack's understanding of these issues are essentially 180 degrees from each other, forming an analytical disagreement that has to be resolved before you try to implement policy.

I do want to address this, however:

After all, just for starters, I can assure you that if we followed some of the policy prescriptions Pletka is cheerleading (somewhat blindly) in the Times today--Iran would quickly retaliate by ramping up the trouble-making in Iraq in a big, big way. After all, of course, they haven't played all their potential Iraq cards yet, and are holding quite a bit in reserve...

The problem, however, is that Iran isn't holding those cards in reserve as "leverage" - they're just patient enough and pragmatic enough to know when and where to play them, especially after their most blatant card to date (Sadr) was put down in relatively short order. Moreover, what exactly are the policy prescriptions that Pletka suggested in the New York Times:

• Outreach to the Iranian opposition

• A plan to contain Iran's regional designs

• supporting the rights of the Iranian people, including notable dissidents

• diplomatic isolation of the Iranian regime

• freezing bank accounts, denying visas, and sealing borders in retaliation for Iranian sponsorship of terrorism

• aggressive efforts to cut off shipments of missile and nuclear technology to Iran

This is controversial?

This is hardly a declaration of war on Tehran, nor does it even necessarily rule out the economic engagement ("kill 'em with connectivity") approach that Praktike favors but of which I am skeptical given what's happened with China. Pletka also notes that Rafsanjani was actively involved in launching a terrorist attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed more than 80. Not Israeli, mind you (not that that would justify the atrocity), but Jewish. Maybe all the folks who think that Rafsanjani is a pragmatic, deal-making realpolitiker would care to explain how exactly he decided to launch what basically amounted to an attack on Argentina out of anything other than bigotry and fanaticism? And this is the guy we're supposed to trust to end Iranian involvement in terrorism? I would've thought the realists had learned their lesson with Arafat ...

While ignoring the obvious polemical point that I don't see all of these "realists" can be aghast at the actions of Karimov or Musharraf while proposing we make nice with Rafsanjani and retain intellectual consistency, I think that there also needs to be a discussion as to what the goals of US policy is with regard to Iran. Is it regime change? An agreement to end their nuclear program? Figure out the goal and formulating the policy will follow forth from that. But when we're formulating these goals, let's not kid ourselves when it comes to monsters like Rafsanjani.

There's a reason they call him "the Shark," you know, and it has nothing to do with his face.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention Ahmadinejad very much. A lot of people are correctly describing him as a fascist, though I would note that none of the major Iranian candidates are talking about disbanding the paramilitary Basiji or Hizb-e-Ansar that are pretty exact equivalents to the Nazi SS or the Italian Fascisti. Yes, he's quite nasty and the intent is that with him on the ballot everyone will run behind Rafsanjani to keep him from the presidency. Thus, when Rafsanjani wins, the regime will be able to claim that the pragmatic statesman has triumphed over the hardliners and resume business as normal with the Europeans.