By Syed Saleem Shahzad (Asia Times Online)
KARACHI – The controversial re-election at the weekend of hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to a second four-year term raises a cloud over United States President Barack Obama’s hopes of engaging Iran in serious negotiations.
For a recently activated nexus, though, Ahmadinejad’s unexpected thumping victory and the intense reaction it has aroused among supporters of the main losing candidate, reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi, provide a golden opportunity for renewed efforts to destabilize Iran.
The nexus includes the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (MKO), a militant Islamic organization that advocates the overthrow of the government; the Pakistani-based Iranian Jundallah, a Sunni group opposed to Tehran; the regional drug mafia and al-Qaeda.
Iranian state radio reported on Tuesday that eight people had been killed during Monday’s protests in Tehran
after tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets. The reports said the deaths came after “thugs” attacked a military post. The mass protests in the capital were the biggest since the Iranian revolution in 1979.
Even though Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called for an inquiry into allegations of vote-rigging – there is going to be a recount – the unrest is likely to continue as it is highly improbable the result will be reversed.
“The turmoil is unprecedented and has indeed manifested the divisions in Iran,” commented Pakistani Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed in a television interview. Mushahid, an expert on Iran and an enthusiastic supporter of the revolution, is known for keeping close contact with the government in Tehran.
The troubles in Iran come at a critical juncture for the Barack Obama administration in the United States
, which has pledged better relations with Iran – a country that for years has been vilified by successive US governments, especially by the George W Bush administration, which accused Tehran of having a nuclear weapons program.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said on Monday, “We are in a position of still assessing what went on, and it’s difficult to assess, because there weren’t any international monitors at the elections. He added that Washington was “deeply troubled by the reports of violence, arrests and possible voting irregularities”.
The crux, though, is that Obama’s policy of engagement requires that he deal with Iran – indeed, he needs the country with regards to the US’s withdrawal of forces from Iraq, and the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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