Analysis: Leadership divisions hamper Iran’s moves to a charm offensive

IRAN, recoiling from increasingly tough sanctions and growing isolation over its nuclear programme, has launched a charm offensive to ease tensions with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, key regional powers that are United States allies.

Iran’s intelligence minister made a rare trip to Saudi Arabia this week to refute recent US claims – which Iran said were “absurd” and “baseless” – that Tehran planned to assassinate the kingdom’s ambassador to Washington, DC.

Iranian officials said Heidar Moslehi, who met Saudi’s crown prince, Nayef bin Abdel-Aziz Al Saud, on Tuesday, also wanted to convince his hosts the US and Israel are trying to sow discord between Riyadh and Tehran.

Tehran is also seeking assurances from Riyadh that it will not pump extra oil to make up for Iran’s market share if the US and Europe toughen sanctions on Iran’s exports.

The Islamic republic knows it cannot confront the West and regional powers at the same time. But Tehran’s overtures to its wary neighbours are being blurred by conflicting signals from Iran’s hardline regime.

Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Turkey that threats by some Iranian political and military figures to strike at Nato missile bases in Turkey if Iran is attacked by Israel or the US did not represent official policy. Only a day earlier, however, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, denounced Turkey’s model of “secular Islam”.

Iran, which is competing with Turkey and Saudi Arabia for influence in a changing Middle East, claims the Arab uprisings are inspired by Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

But television viewers in the region are well-acquainted with Iran’s draconian suppression of mass pro-democracy protests that erupted after president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “stolen” re-election in 2009.

They are also aware that, despite its vast oil wealth, Iran is struggling to control double-digit inflation and unemployment while Turkey’s economy is booming.

Even though Mr Moslehi’s trip to Saudi Arabia was apparently at the behest of Ayatollah Khamenei, it did not stop others in the supreme leader’s camp from criticising his attempts to ease strained relations with the Kingdom.

Hossein Shariatmadari, an aide to the ayatollah and veteran editor of Iran’s hardline Kayhan newspaper, wrote on Wednesday: “Unfortunately, it must be said that our diplomatic apparatus unintentionally has given the collapsing Saud family a gift it badly needed.”

The Iranian regime has shown similar divisions over the recent storming of the British embassy in Tehran, which has badly soured relations with Europe. Tehran and Ankara have mutually beneficial trade relations, and Turkey has opposed Washington’s uncompromising stance on Iran’s nuclear programme, arguing for a diplomatic solution.

But the Arab Spring is stoking regional tensions. Turkey and Saudi Arabia condemned Syria’s brutal crackdown on the opposition, while Iran is a staunch supporter of president Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which is Tehran’s only Arab ally.

Despite its public bravado, Iran appears jittery about the possibility of an attack on its nuclear facilities: Tehran said on Wednesday it may relocate some of its uranium enrichment work to more secure locations.

Influential voices in Washington, meanwhile, have warned the US that, if it relies solely on “compulsion”, it could stumble into war with Iran.

Zbignew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to president Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, warned: “If we slide into a conflict with Iran, in this or that fashion, the consequences for us all will be disastrous.”