Europeans signal tougher line on Iran's renegade nuke program
Thursday, July 22, 2010
By: ICEJ News

At home, Conservative clerics join rebellion against Ahmadinejad

A new poll of key European countries shows that overwhelming numbers of respondents have a negative attitude towards Iran and would support stronger sanctions against the Islamic Republic to try and persuade it to abandon its renegade nuclear program.

In a new poll, citizens of Germany (80%), France (83%) and Sweden (90%) said that they wanted the international community to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons rather than agreeing that Iran has the right to develop nuclear weapons. Those surveyed also said they want to see the EU impose further sanctions: Germany (70%), France (66%), and Sweden (78%).

The survey results come as EU leaders are said to be preparing yet another round of sanctions against Iran which will be more in line with punitive measures passed recently in the US Congress, which included a ban on dealing with Iranian banks and the targeting of Iran's oil and gas sector.

Inside Iran itself, domestic opposition to the agenda of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to mount as reports have surfaced that even the conservative Shi’ite clerics who backed his election in 2005 are mounting a campaign to prevent his protégé and chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, from being elected when his current term expires in 2013. There is even talk of impeaching Ahmadinejad on the grounds that he is unstable and his policies are leading the country into an economic disaster.

The anti-Ahmadinejad movement is being led by such “principlist" figures as the speaker of Iran's parliament, Ali Larijani; a leading member of parliament, Ahmad Tavakoli; and Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and a defeated candidate in last year's presidential election.

The revolt is seen by analysts as part of a larger movement to try and separate Ahmadinejad from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has so far given Ahmadinejad his unqualified support. But analysts caution that this conservative revolt against the current president is more about internal politics in Iran than a sudden awakening of human rights or democracy, much less a difference in opinion about attitudes towards Israel or the West.

"Their goal is to have a president from [among] themselves," explained Mehdi Khalaji, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "They want to remove Ahmadinejad from executive power because he is very, very exclusivist and he excluded everybody who is not from his own circle and he confiscated the executive power. They want to take executive power back."

In related news, Radio Free Europe reported on Wednesday that Iran is planning to build a security wall along its border with Iraqi Kurdistan in the north of the country, in a move Iraqi officials say they were not notified of and which they view with deep concern.

Iranian Interior Minister Mohammed Najar confirmed the plans recently, adding that portions of the $150 million project would extend to Iran’s borders with Turkey, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Iranian security units have clashed violently with Kurdish separatists on the border with Iraq on several occasions, and a gas pipeline running from Iran to Turkey was blown up by Kurdish rebels on Wednesday.