October 11-13
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi threaded the political needle last week, supporting President Rohani’s foreign policy initiative in general, but declining to endorse everything, and condemning the United States.
Khamenehi’s comments, posted on his official website, said, “We support the govern-ment’s diplomat moves, including the New York trip, because we have faith in the government and are optimistic about it. But some of what happened in New York was not appropriate, because the US government is not trustworthy.”
That was widely assumed to be a criticism of Rohani’s 15-minute telephone conversation with President Obama.
However, others saw it as just a political ploy by Kha-menehi to keep some distance between himself and Rohani’s foreign policy efforts. As one analyst said, Khamenehi is giving general political backing to Rohani and thus allowing him to continue, while at the same time using the “not appropriate” remark to give Khamenehi a political backstop in case things go wrong.
A diplomat in Tehran told Reuters that Khamenehi is willing to give Rohani a chance to try his idea, “but if it doesn’t work, he’ll go back to his own way.”
Khamenehi also opened up with all barrels on the United States. “We are skeptical of Americans and have no trust in them at all,” he said. “The American government is untrustworthy, arrogant, illogical and a promise-breaker. It is a government captured by the international Zionist network.”
Khamenehi’s repeated description of the United States as untrustworthy reserves for him the opportunity to pull the rug out from under Rohani at any time and stop Rohani’s initiative by blaming the United States and not Rohani.
Rohani’s efforts have been endorsed by 80 percent of the Majlis membership who signed on to a statement backing what he did in New York. (See last week’s Iran Times, page one.) Several Pasdar generals have expressed doubts and reservations, but they have not gained much backing publicly.
The Majlis endorsement indicates that mainstream conservatives want to try to make peace with the West and only the hardliners are holding back.