Post-election ‘tidying up’ continues throughout Iran as the regime reasserts its hold on power slowly but surely. It seems that many important networks hedged their bets until they could see which the wind was blowing.

The influential Society of Scholars of Qom Seminary waited until this weekend to remove its doubts and to throw itself behind the President with a message of congratulations. This is interpreted as clerical determination to place the survival of the Islamic republic above any other consideration.

However, the Financial Times also reports that the reformist Association of Scholars and Researchers of Qom Seminary, representing a minority of clerics, took a different view, questioning the legitimacy of the election.

This story seems to tell us that the regime may be secure but that the ‘reformists’ are beginning to coalesce around a narrative that is not necessarily revolutionary but that is almost certainly determined on change. It may yet come to power in a few years through constitutional means.

We also note the claims (still unconfirmed) that the Iranians plan to put on trial a local British Embassy staff member for allegedly helping to instigate the recent protests. This is the only one of the original nine arrested who is still in custody.

The Iranian authorities also released a Greek journalist: his arrest was for the rather mild matter of exceeding the duration of his visa. With the analyst far from certain to face charges, it is a question whether Western hysteria or Islamic villainy offers the best explanation of recent events.

We detect a sort of sub-racist attitude to Islamic justice based largely on some particularly nasty anti-homosexual and other communal incidents in the backwoods.

This is probably like condemning the US Constitution on the basis of lynching in the Deep South but liberals are determined to label this regime as only one step down from that of the Nazi Party.

Even if Western worries about an Iranian ‘white terror’ have clearly been overdone, the EU, at British request, was placing maximum but ratcheted pressure on Iran, starting with a summoning of Iranian Ambassadors and warnings of tougher measures, including visa restrictions.

However, it is equally clear that there was no stomach in Europe for a few possibly slightly naughty diplomatic auxiliaries to be allowed to derail a dialogue with Iran. The sentiment is likely to be similar amongst high officials in Tehran.

The problem here is that the conspiracy theory about Western interference is like the counter-conspiracy theory of vote-rigging. Both rely on suggestive circumstantial evidence. Neither side has full access to the facts available within the other side’s system.

In a sense, the West started this tit-for-tat in hysteria by shifting from criticism of the handling of protests in the direction of full acceptance of protestors' claims about the implied legitimacy of the regime.

Tehran now has every incentive and perhaps some need to create a show trial in which it can present its case, based on its intelligence data, for Western, specifically British, dabbling in its internal affairs.

From there, it can track back into the Iranians complicit with a plot which they may yet be able to prove (not necessarily as official at all) regardless of the protests of the FCO whose impotence is now out there for all to see.

The targeted individual is a ‘respected political analyst’ who could face a long jail sentence and it does point up the ambiguity when a local analyst offers advice to officials of a foreign power but the whole business does seem to have been over-egged by all sides.

Meanwhile, the Israelis continue to stir the pot with claims that Mossad has advised that, as a result of ‘secret’ talks with Saudi officials, the Kingdom would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over its territory. The Saudis deny talks but Israel is clearly placing a direct attack on Iran back on the agenda.

There is much at stake. The question is not whether the arrested individual is released but whether the release is political despite any British involvement in Iran’s internal affairs in order to keep dialogue with the West on track.

And if the matter goes to trial, the issue becomes whether the trial is fair and fairly reported despite FCO determination to protect its own. This may all be sorted out diplomatically but the underlying questions surrounding the nature of British direct or indirect support for the reform movement remain unanswered.

The Israeli-Saudi reference is important in this context. Decision-making within Iran is taking place under the same perceived atmosphere of external threat that fuelled the turn to terror after the French and Russian revolutions. 

It will take some restraint on the part of the Iranian regime not to be provoked into unnecessarily draconian measures. If the UK and the EU are trying to calm things, the Israelis are clearly trying to fuel paranoia for reasons that are malign and dangerous both to peace and the reform movement.

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Pushing the fevered fantasies of Western reporters to one side, Iran’s domestic crisis may be simmering but the boiling point has now passed – rooftop protests are continuing in pro-reform areas but the momentum for protest is diminishing, leaving behind it sullen resentment on the losing side.

The persistence of Moussavi is emotionally understandable but it raises the risk of a ‘white terror’ (including the death penalty for ‘plotters’) that would effectively end any talks with the liberal West for perhaps half a decade. The regime now merely says, ‘bring it on!’.

A Cooling Off Period

In the international arena, the effect of the crisis has been to create an instant ‘cooling off’ period on talks between the US and Iran. The officials on both sides want talks but the US needs to see that it is not dealing with a country engaged in a brutal revenge on its dissidents.

The Iranians, on the contrary, want to see some signs that the West has ended its failed strategy of actively encouraging domestic resistance to the regime. Neither side is likely to get what it wants which raises the risks of regional conflagration by several percentage points.

Since the rest of the international community wants talks as well, countries like Russia are beginning to imply that a ‘white terror’ would not be helpful. But Obama is stuck on the merry-go-round of American street expectations. His language had to harden regardless of all diplomatic common sense.

It is as if he knows he must be as offensive as he can with Iran now in order to earn political capital for talks that may take place much later than he had hoped. His extended honeymoon with the American people may not, in any case, last too much longer for unrelated domestic reasons.

The G8 is also united in its condemnation of Iran’s handling of what the regime saw as an internal coup attempt. The G8 seems equally united on driving negotiations on the nuclear issue ever harder. But everyone is now talking dangerously big.

Russia will have joined the condemnation, which they undoubtedly moderated a little, in order to maintain its position within the G8 as Iran’s best friend. However, Khamenei and Ahmedinejad may be in no mood either to be bullied or to negotiate.

The Palestine Peace Process (central to attempts by the West to reduce anti-Western feelings in the Arab street and to wider political and economic stability) is a tough enough play as it is.

Now, the pro-Iranian bloc (Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas) are highly nervous about the stability of their patron. They could either begin to wobble in the West’s direction or become very much more hard line as Ahmedinejad consolidates what appears to be a domestic victory in the months to come.

A Dangerous Time

This is a very serious international crisis. We have a recalcitrant Israel that is quite prepared to mount a direct inflammatory attack on Iran. The re-insertion of Western popular support for democratic politics into the region will unnerve many conservative Arab allies as to where such support may lead.

The Iranian regime is resentful and possibly a bit paranoid, less likely to be helpful on Iraq and Afghanistan where, in fact, Iran and the West have common interests.

For months now, Iraq and Iran have appeared to go their separate ways but the interconnection between the two countries may create new problems for the US.

The US is committed to withdrawal to its out-of-town bases and to the hand-over of control of the urban areas to the Iraqi Government during this coming week. Unfortunately, a determined element has mounted a wave of vicious suicide bombs that seem designed to anger the Shia into eventual revolt.

New rules on US military conduct (including the restriction that mine-resistant armoured vehicles may only be used in urban areas during the day) are raising worries within the US military that, for political reasons, it and the civilian population that it has protected to date are being placed at risk.

There is a profound pessimism setting in, not about the survival of the Iraqi state (which seems secure enough) but about the level of urban and civil bloodshed likely in the coming months. This is not the time to have Iran unco-operative ...

Altogether, this may seem a low point for Iran. It is apparently internally divided with an enemy within. The Lebanese election did not provide a breakthrough for Hezbollah and there is growing ‘soft power’ pressure on Damascus and Ramallah from the West.

Yet the regime was not over-turned, despite best efforts from a section of its own elite backed by the middle classes in the capital city and with immense foreign ‘soft power’ support.

The regime’s reactions from this point on are unknowable. We can expect that it will seek to consolidate its power within the country by any means necessary. This might require a bit of brutality, if only to demonstrate strength of purpose against Moussavi’s increasingly futile but persistent campaigning.

The West, under popular liberal pressure, may have lost its ability to control what happens next because it has presented itself as a determined enemy of Islamic democratic values (at least as the regime sees things).

In praising Moussavi openly, Obama has effectively challenged the Supreme Leader’s judgement just as the pro-reformers within Iran have grasped the nettle and positioned themselves as part of the liberal wave that has flowed out from Washington since the Reagan era.

This now turns a diplomatic dialogue between nation states back into a culture war. It becomes a 'reasonable' option for Iran to take up the challenge and export revolution again - and for the West to try and squeeze it dry and turn a blind eye to military action by its own radical elements.

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