Iran Leaders Defy Western Pressure A Nuclear Claim and Firm Line on Guards

By Michael Slackman and Nazila Fathi

Iran’s leaders maintained their defiance of the West on Sunday, with the president announcing that Tehran had 3,000 active centrifuges to enrich uranium and the supreme leader appointing a war veteran and ideological hard-liner as the new commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. While the details of the announcements did not signal any significant change of course for Iranian policy, the pairing of the messages appeared intended to reaffirm Iran’s refusal to back down in the face of pressure from the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program and its role in Iraq, political analysts in Iran said.

The White House has threatened to declare the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, a move that could open the way for far-reaching economic sanctions against Iran, since the Guards are involved in nearly every aspect of the state-controlled economy, diplomats here said. At the same time, Iran faces the prospect of being sanctioned a third time by the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear program.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Sunday that Iran had finally reached its stated goal of developing 3,000 centrifuges, but his message seemed more of a challenge to the United States and Europe than it did a statement of a technological breakthrough.

“The West thought the Iranian nation would give in after just a resolution, but now we have taken another step in the nuclear progress and launched more than 3,000 centrifuge machines, installing a new cascade every week,” state television quoted the president as saying.

It was impossible to verify the president’s claim. A report released Thursday by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, in Vienna said there were nearly 2,000 centrifuges running in a facility in Natanz, with about 650 centrifuges being tested or under construction. The report also raised questions about the expertise of the Iranian enrichment program, noting that the product was “well below the expected quantity for a facility of this design.”

Iran insists that it is pursing a peaceful nuclear program, but Western officials have said they believe Iran wants to develop a weapons program. Iranian leaders, while increasingly unified behind a confrontational strategy, have also expressed a desire to have the country’s nuclear case moved out of the Security Council and back to the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear agency. Iran has reached an agreement with the agency to answer questions about many years of nuclear activities that have led to suspicions in the West.

The agreement was dismissed by the United States as a half step that ignored the primary demand by Washington and Europe that the Iranians stop enrichment.

But the news that most surprised Iranians was the sudden announcement that General Yahya Rahim Safavi was being replaced, after having headed the Revolutionary Guards for a decade.

In his place, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei named Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari. The Revolutionary Guards organization controls a force of about 200,000, and in addition to having a stake in every significant corner of Iran’s economy, it is involved in the civil system of governance. Ahmadinejad was a member during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, and has placed dozens of former members in leadership positions around the country and in the central government in Tehran.

Political analysts in Tehran said they believed that Safavi was not a strong supporter of the president because of Ahmadinejad’s economic policies, which have been widely criticized by conservatives and others as causing inflation and other economic problems around the country.

Jafari now heads a force that was founded in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to serve as the guardian of Islamic revolution. It is by design the most economic and politically independent body in the country, outside of the supreme leader’s office. Jafari has an established record of support for the theocratic system of government and its hard-line policies.

In 1999, he showed a willingness to use the Guards’ military force to quell student riots. In a letter to then-President Mohammad Khatami, he wrote: “We have reached the end of our rope and can no longer tolerate if the situation is not confronted.”

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

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