The analysis of Iranian negotiation strategy — which appears to represent a step back from the brink of confrontation — in the communique is predicated on the regime’s need for self-preservation. It wants a confrontation with the great powers that will provide a pretext for intensified internal repression and marginalization of domestic opponents. That may be why the leading figures of the opposition oppose a stricter regime of sanctions.

And I can’t help but think of what an Iranian dissident told me recently: “Do not believe anything our president says. Do not believe their claim for nuclear power to be peaceful. They have no credibility, you can not trust them, this election was proof of that. They stole our votes, and silenced our protest against them.”

Why would Biden have made a statement which so radically undermines Obama’s policy towards Iran? Maybe it reflects bad new advice coming from a new NSC adviser of vague portfolio. Maybe it’s a clumsy attempt to ratchet up some pressure on the Iranian regime without actually doing anything, without regard to the spiral dynamics it could kick into gear. Or maybe it is just a major Biden gaffe, not a dramatic departure in the Obama administration’s policy. That would still be bad, but would be salvagable [sic]. Either way, the administration urgently needs to come forward quickly with a restatement of its policy — and make sure the Israelis and others in the region understand it clearly — or else it risks paying some extraordinarily serious costs.

The White House emailed Marc to walk Biden’s statement back — indicating that the vice president really did say something out of line with administration policy — by writing, “Our friends and allies, including Israel, know that the President believes that now is the time to explore direct diplomatic options.” None of which really explains why Biden said what he said. It’s hard to imagine that a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee didn’t understand that his words would be read as a green light for an Israeli strike on Iran.

An important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult.

Guy might know what he’s talking about.

Well, OK, sure. But what good is that if the regime can withstand legitimacy-based challenges through the use of brute force? I asked Parsi if the opposition’s goal was still to overturn the election, given that its legal recourses are few, and if not, what a new goal might be. “The goal at this stage remains” a fair election result, he replied, since the “wiggle room is still extensive” for overturning the election. Contingencies could emerge, compelling an overturn of the results, such as “a large number of senior ayatollahs com[ing] out to criticize the legitimacy of the electoral results” or if the opposition could “get a majority of 86 people on the Assembly of Experts to come out, that can really threaten Khamenei and his institutions.”

Parsi further explained, in response to Matt Duss of the Center for American Progress, that the critical constituency would be conservative clerics who feel threatened by Ahmadinejad’s consolidation of power. In an irony from the perspective of the American debate about Iran — which conflates reformism with secularism — the clerics see Ahmadinejad “as a dangerous element, quite correctly, who tries to undermine the clergy as a whole.” That might compel some of them to resist Ahmadinejad, or to place pressure on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to find some compromise with the opposition.

But if a compromise can’t be found, then the opposition enters a new phase, having to face a choice between accepting Ahmadinejad and moving to a more radical position. “There are people loyal to the system, who don’t want to bring the system down but at the same time believe the system is quite imperfect [and wish to] ensure the system changes through peaceful means,” Parsi said. If they fail, “then we face a significantly more radical movement in Iran, with more bloodshed than we’ve seen.”

The important criterion for American policy right now has to be to reject Ahmadinejad’s attempts at portraying his victory as final. That means no negotiations, which is “creating some problems with the Obama administration, which is so very dedicated to the process of diplomacy,” Parsi said. While the administration has placed the onus for any diplomacy on Iran, if Iran calls the U.S.’s bluff and talks renew, it will send the message that the international community views the opposition’s efforts as futile.

There’s a lot of stuff in Bolton’s new Washington Post op-ed about how negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program will fail — and, in all honesty, the case for that looks better now than it did before the June 12 election. But that’s all foreplay. Money quote:

Significantly, the uprising in Iran also makes it more likely that an effective public diplomacy campaign could be waged in the country to explain to Iranians that [an Israeli strike] is directed against the regime, not against the Iranian people. This was always true, but it has become even more important to make this case emphatically, when the gulf between the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the citizens of Iran has never been clearer or wider. Military action against Iran’s nuclear program and the ultimate goal of regime change can be worked together consistently.

Yes, the Israeli bombs will only kill the bad Iranians. When patriotic Iranians of the opposition see Israeli F-16s raining death from above on Iranian targets, Bolton actually expects them to think, “Boom shack-a-lacka! Here come our Israeli liberators! Let them bomb whatever they like, since even though Mir Hussein Moussavi supports a nuclear program as part of a consensus opinion, I believe Israeli propaganda that says it has our best interests at heart! That’ll show Mahmoud Ahmadinejad! Did you hear that, Aunt Marjam? Aunt Marjam…?”

If there’s one thing that a Bush official should understand, it’s that people under attack from a foreign enemy don’t rush to embrace their more moderate leaders.

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As it happens, David’s at the Personal Democracy forum and worries that Twitter, so important to the Iranian oppositon, provides only a mere simulacrum of political organizing. Meanwhile, Tom Lee presents a more practical fear: the centralization of Twitter’s technical model makes it vulnerable to a (not-yet-manifested, to be sure) total shutdown if attacked by a threatened or hostile government.

…the judiciary should charge the leading “rioters” as being “mohareb” or one who wages war against God.

“They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely,” he said. Under Iran’s Islamic law, punishment for people convicted as mohareb is execution.

Khatami added, presumably for good measure, that the judiciary ought to “punish” the protesters “without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson.” He says that the protesters are “rioters” who have murdered the militiamen of the Basij, and public safety can’t tolerate a balloon-based assault. I’m sure he’s really talking about the “judiciary” here, and not other means of government control empowered to show no mercy.

The Guardian Council, which is in charge of the recount rejected by opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, issued a statement through its spokesman today that “the election was the healthiest since the revolution.” That’s where Khatami’s government-based religious injunction for executions comes into play.

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Ian Kelly, the State Department spokesman, handled that question yesterday:

…as far as the P-5+1 is concerned, of course, you know that Javier Solana sent out an invitation. We, of course, are waiting for an answer to that invitation, and we haven’t –
QUESTION: But you could meet without –
MR. KELLY: We haven’t received…

The P-5+1 is the diplomatic shorthand for the five permanent U.N. Security Council members — the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia — and Germany, who have been patiently making overtures to Iran over its nuclear program for years. Solana, the European Union foreign-policy chief, has tried to restart nuclear diplomacy this year, and the Iranians have praised the offer while not taking steps to actually discuss it.

Now put that together with this quote that Mir Hussein Moussavi’s foreign spokesman gave to Eli Lake of The Washington Times:

Mr. Makhmalbaf said Mr. Mousavi and others in the opposition fear that Western leaders will eventually negotiate with the Iranian government despite its loss of legitimacy since the disputed elections.

“We are afraid Western countries, including the United States, will sign a deal with an Ahmadinejad government [even though] it is an illegal government that has not been elected and has come to power by a coup d’etat,” he said.

Even if it turns out that the regime survives this current crisis, the Obama administration is positioning itself not to rush in to any talks, and instead place the incentive on the regime to positively accede to the P-5+1 process, which so far this year, it’s not shown much of a willingness to accept.

Of course, if it does, then it really will place the administration in a bind. Does the administration and its allies then try to link human rights obligations to any nuclear deal, knowing that the regime won’t accept that, and thereby jeopardizing the prospect of keeping Iran free of nuclear weapons? (And that’s presuming that, say, China and Russia will accept that, which they probably won’t.) Or does it hold to its top priority of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and implicitly grant the regime legitimacy? Right now, though, the administration’s construction at least buys it time to judge Iranian intentions — and decide whether a regime willing to so blatantly steal an election is really rational enough to hew to its international obligations.

… at least three Iranian newspapers reported that of 290 members of the Iranian Parliament invited to a victory party for him Wednesday night, only 105 attended, suggesting a deep divide within the political elite over the election and its aftermath.

That won’t overturn an election, but it might be an indicator that the center of gravity for meeting minimal demands of the protesters is with the elites, and not out on the streets. In Qom, ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is doing … something that we don’t really know about, but reportedly (well, much-speculated-ly) he’s attempting to convince the Assembly of Experts to dislodge Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei. I don’t know if this bit of elite-based speculation is well-grounded. But it looks like there needs to be some renewed exogenous event to re-spark a mass opposition movement. Mir Hussein Moussavi told supporters that he’s not backing down, but the regime has little incentive to compromise if it can break up the demonstrations through violence and withstand elite challenges.