Hints of Iranian Flexibility on Nuclear Issue

August 20, 2009
CAIRO — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has settled on a strategy of trying to consolidate power by surrounding himself with loyalists at home while appearing to signal to the international community a readiness to address the nuclear issue, political commentators, diplomats and scientists said on Thursday.

Iran's Nuclear ProgramWhile much attention has been focused on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s decision to try to pack his cabinet with loyalists, his choice of a well-respected physicist, Ali Akbar Salehi, as a vice president and the head of Iran’s nuclear agency has been greeted in the diplomatic and scientific community as signaling a possibly less dogmatic, more pragmatic nuclear policy.

Two other recent developments have added to that perception. The first, according to diplomats and scientists, is recent indications that Iran may be prepared to be more cooperative with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The second was Mr. Ahmadinejad’s decision to retain the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, and not to move a more conservative ally into that position.

Experts said that the Iranian president and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, might have calculated that resolving the nuclear standoff could satisfy two needs. It could help the troubled economy by heading off new sanctions — and possibly assist in lifting existing sanctions — while giving the two leaders much-needed credibility for having achieved a positive policy objective.

Hints of Iranian Flexibility on Nuclear Issue