Taking Iran Down a Notch
The Bush administration says Tehran is getting too cocky, but the broad U.S. pushback carries big risks
Dissent. Intriguingly, there are signs in Iran of growing reformist opposition to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose rhetoric against the West is seen as worsening Iran's economic condition. In recent weeks, Ahmadinejad has been heckled by university students, and the normally cowed media have given the protests significant coverage. Pro-Ahmadinejad conservatives fared badly in local elections, including in Tehran, and in the selection of the Assembly of Experts, a group that chooses Iran's supreme spiritual leader. Anger over raging inflation, unemployment, and unmet economic promises has prompted dozens of lawmakers to challenge Ahmadinejad's program in parliament. "Our strategy might be beginning to work," says a European diplomat.
Perhaps, but some experts worry that Washington may overplay its hand and strengthen Iran's hard-liners by stoking fears of American intervention. "This muscular approach will help them," argues Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University. And the U.S. moves raise the real possibility that some part of Iran's opaque power structure will miscalculate or lash out against American interests, drawing U.S. military retaliation. Some skeptics believe that is the point. "It looks to me more like an attempt to provoke the Iranians to respond," says Trita Parsi, an Iran specialist and president of the National Iranian American Council. He is not alone. Some U.S. Navy officers in the Persian Gulf, U.S. News has learned, are comparing the rising tensions with Iran to the events in the Gulf of Tonkin that spurred America's fateful plunge into the Vietnam War. Their question: Could it happen again?
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