Posted: 1/19/2008 4:40:42 PM EDT
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www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?storyID=12181 The recent incident in the Strait of Hormuz has politics written all over it, says Robert Fox The buzzing of US Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz by Revolutionary Guard patrol boats earlier this week may well have been an Iranian electioneering stunt. While all eyes are on the US presidential election, the Iranian Islamic Republic is gearing up for its seventh election for the assembly on March 14 and it is shaping into a referendum on the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He and his radicals appear to be losing support, both from the voters who carried him to power and from the nation's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Since last month's National Intelligence Estimate report showed that Iran appears to have halted its crucial nuclear weapons programme, the US has turned down the threats of military strikes against Iran to just about zero. This has deprived Ahmadinejad ofhis key stratagem - the need to rally the people to confront the threat from the Great Enemy (he rarely if ever refers to the US administration and George W Bush by name). This would account for some of Ahmadinejad's pals in the Revolutionary Guard upping the ante by sending out the 'swarm' boats against the US destroyers. Khamenei's men, however, have made it plain they're fed up with Ahmadinejad's dismal economic policies, now yielding inflation at 19 per cent. But there may be something much bigger in the air. There is talk in the Gulf that the US administration and Khamenei's advisors are working feverishly behind the scenes for 'a comprehensive settlement' roughly along the lines of the deal with North Korea. Tehran, threatened by a self-perpetuating spiral of violence in neighbouring Iraq, would increase its help in managing Iraq's security through the Tehran-sponsored Shia militias, particularly the Badr corps. In return, Iran would keep its civil nuclear power intact; sanctions would be lifted and investment could flow from Europe and even America |