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vowed to preserve. Much better to gain leverage by producing low-
enriched uranium — far from weapons grade — under International
Atomic Energy Agency inspection and allow rumors to swirl.
So Iran, long at the top of the Washington agenda, has slid down. It’s
partly the Arab Spring. It’s partly that you can’t keep saying the same
thing. People do begin to remember the refrain, although nobody in
the large Iran-the-clear-and-present-danger school ever seems to get
called to account. They should be. The nuclear bogeyman obsession
has been a distraction from the need to try to tease out a relationship
with Tehran, see Iran as it is. Only the most flimsy efforts have been
made, insufficient to test the waters.
Those waters are troubled. The Islamic Republic has not recovered
from its convulsion of 2009. It is sickly, consumed by hypocrisy as it
cheers on some brave Arabs (but not those in Syria) while brutalizing
its own seekers of the freedom promised in 1979. Arabs aren’t buying
Iranian hypocrisy. Only Iran’s command of Revolutionary Guard
force and the opposition’s lack of a shared goal salvage it.
Khamenei is at loggerheads with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
who got into such a sulk recently that he took 11 days off work,
infuriating everybody. The Majlis, or parliament, is investigating
Ahmadinejad for various alleged frauds including, of all things, vote-
buying in 2009! Ahmadinejad was booed during his June 3 speech
commemorating Ayatollah Khomeini’s death. Iran is characterized by
what Farideh Farhi of the University of Hawaii recently termed
“administrative chaos.”
That’s not how you make a nuke. When remembering Iran — and it
must be remembered — call the fear-mongers to account.

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