LAT: Election Result Confounds Administration's Iranian Policy

Election Result Confounds Administration's Iranian Policy
By Tyler Marshall, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON -- The surprise victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran's presidential elections probably will exacerbate existing tensions within the Bush administration about how to deal with Tehran and its quest for nuclear weapons, analysts said Saturday....(B)oth Bush administration officials who advocate engagement with Iran and administration hard-liners who seek to isolate Tehran and advocate regime change are likely to portray the outcome as buttressing their positions, several U.S.-based experts said.

Despite Bush's inclusion of Iran as part of his famous "axis of evil" in early 2002, his administration has been so divided on Iran that it has yet to produce an agreed, unified policy directive on the subject.

But in recent months, hard-liners have lost ground, and voices within the administration arguing for some form of engagement have strengthened. In February, for example, Bush agreed to support a European Union effort to negotiate an agreement in which Iran would give up its quest to enrich uranium in return for economic and security incentives.

Hard-liners now might point to the victory of Ahmadinejad, who has called for Iraq to move ahead at full speed with what he calls "peaceful nuclear technology," as evidence that even indirect engagement has failed.

"They will argue that they've been vindicated," predicted Allen Keiswetter, who served both President Clinton and Bush as a deputy assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs before joining the Middle East Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. He said advocates of engagement would urge a "wait and see" response to Ahmadinejad's victory, noting his mainly domestic background and the prominence of domestic issues in the election itself....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-usiran26jun26,0,4774158.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Don't think that Chimpy isn't positively salivating over this outcome -- or that, perhaps, some of his goons may have even helped engineer it.

This lets the neocons sound the drumbeat for some type of military action (airstrikes?) against nasty, evil Iran.