How they see us: Iran braces for an invasion

There’s a palpable sense of tension in Tehran these days, said Rudolph Chimelli in the Munich Süddeutsche Zeitung. People are worried sick that America will launch an attack to stop Iran from getting the bomb. Senior figures have openly criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for ramping up tensions. But, far from toning down the rhetoric, he has lashed out at “traitors”—meaning ex-Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani—calling them “more stupid than goats” for wanting to give in to the West. He has also replaced chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani with an even more hard-line figure, and charged one of Larijani’s deputies, Hossein Mousavian, with spying for the British. Plus, he has ordered all Iranians not to speak to foreigners. Last week’s report by the International Atomic Energy Agency confirming that Iran now has nearly 3,000 operating centrifuges—enough to make a bomb within one year—has ramped up the tension even more.

We’re in trouble, said Iran’s reformist daily E’temad-e Melli in an editorial. Ahmadinejad dismisses the idea of a U.S. attack and calls sanctions meaningless “bits of paper.” But he’s wrong on both counts: President Bush means business, and sanctions have been disastrous for the economy. Our own dangerous neocons are rampant, said Hossein Bastani on the Iranian exiles’ Web site Roozonline.com. Ahmadinejad has placed his stooges everywhere in the administration. Larijani himself was a hard-liner, but apparently he wasn’t rigid enough, so the president has replaced him with Saeed Jalili, whose record of international diplomacy so far consists of trying to convert Cuba’s Fidel Castro to Islam.

Even so, Ahmadinejad is right, said Aluf Benn in Tel Aviv’s Ha’aretz. The West has no stomach for a fight. At a recent strategic conference in New York, almost all of the analysts agreed that bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would only cause oil prices to skyrocket and further strengthen Ahmadinejad’s position. It would also prompt the regime to attack Gulf oil facilities and possibly to initiate terrorist operations in America.

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Do not heed such counsels of despair, said Leslie Susser in The Jerusalem Post. Iran is still struggling to make its centrifuges work, so a bomb is probably some years away, and, in the meantime, there are signs that “muscular diplomacy” is working. True, Russia and China oppose the U.S. sanctions, while Germany is reluctant to jeopardize its huge interests in Iran. (Bush’s “apocalyptic” warnings of “World War III” are doubtless aimed at scaring them into compliance.) But the latest U.S. moves to stop Western businesses from dealing with Iran are already hurting the economy, the business interests of the elite, and Ahmadinejad’s chances of re-election. The very stridency of Ahmadinejad’s reaction is an encouraging sign of vulnerability. We must keep up the pressure.