Drumbeat Update

I suspected that Nicolas Sarkozy was out making a bunch of statements about Iran because what he was hearing from the President at their little set-to in Kennebunkport was turning him white. The Moonie Times confirms this:

After a brief interruption of his New Hampshire vacation to meet President Bush in the family compound at Kenebunkport, Maine, French President Nicolas Sarkozy came away convinced his U.S. counterpart is serious about bombing Iran's secret nuclear facilities. That's the reading as it filtered back to Europe's foreign ministries...

But meanwhile, it's interesting to see how this is playing out in Tehran, where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's chief rival was just given more power than him:

In a move considered to be a blow to the hardline politics of Iran's ruling party, the former president Hashemi Rafsanjani was today chosen to head the powerful clerical body that has responsibility over the country's supreme leader.

Mr Rafsanjani received 41 votes to lead the Assembly of Experts, the group of clerics that oversees, appoints and dismisses Iran's supreme leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei [...]

The former president is regarded as more moderate than the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose politics are at odds with Mr Rafsanjani's .

The two politicians went head to head in the 2005 elections, when Mr Ahmadinejad beat Mr Rafsanjani in the run-off to become president of the country.

"This is exactly what the hardliners don't want," said Dr Ali Ansari, an Iran-watcher at Chatham House and a professor of Iranian history at the University of St Andrews. "It's a body blow for Ahmadinejad."

Iran's governmental structure is byzantine. But suffice to say that the head of the committee that can fire the Supreme Leader has a lot more power than the President of the country. Inside Iran the Ahmadinejad Presidency has not been successful, particularly on the economic front that he has the most control over. And his statements on matters of foreign policy are seen inside the regime as unhelpful. Far from being a despot or a dictator, Ahmadinejad is an unpopular public servant. Just like George Bush.

This seems to be happening on Iran's terms and not in reaction to American threats. I think that we often make the mistake in America that the world revolves around us, a kind of American heliocentric theory. In fact there are internal machinations that we don't fully understand, and typically when we try to meddle in these affairs we make the problem worse.