Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Mark N. Katz

Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s most recent statement that the Holocaust is a myth and denouncing Israel is an indication that he does not see U.S. President Obama’s call for dialogue and improved relations with Iran as desirable from his perspective.

While Moscow has applauded the Obama administration’s decision not to execute the Bush administration’s plan to deploy a ballistic missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic aimed at Iran, Tehran is undoubtedly focusing on the Obama administration’s plan to instead deploy sea-based ballistic missile defenses closer to Iran. Ahmadinejad is highly likely to see this not only as more threatening to Iran than the Poland/Czech Republic option, but also to see the Obama administration’s foregoing the latter as an attempt to curry favor with Moscow in the hope of enlisting its cooperation against Tehran.

Finally, with Ahmadinejad seeing the United States as somehow orchestrating the continued Iranian democratic opposition protests against his claimed re-election victory, it all must seem to him that the Obama administration is even more of a threat to him than the Bush administration ever was. Issuing strident statements about Israel, then, is a desperate attempt by Ahmadinejad to rally support both at home and in the Muslim world.

Moscow, though, is making it clear that the Obama administration’s abandoning the Poland/Czech Republic BMD deployment plan will not result in a quid pro quo from Russia vis-à-vis Tehran. While there really are forces that threaten Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Republic, Moscow is making clear that Russia is not one of them.