Iran's Nuclear Negotiator Resigns

Ahmadinejad Seen Asserting Control

Iran yesterday announced the resignation of its chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, a move that signals deepening internal divisions on the eve of critical international talks about its nuclear program.

The announcement may indicate that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to gain control of Iran's nuclear policy and that the country is preparing to take an even tougher line in negotiations, according to analysts and European officials familiar with the talks.

Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and a former presidential candidate, had supported negotiations to try to defuse growing tensions. But he had faced increasing challenges from Ahmadinejad, who has vowed repeatedly that Iran will not bow to international pressure.

At talks with European negotiators in Rome on Tuesday, Larijani will be replaced by Saeed Jalili, a mid-level Foreign Ministry official described by Iranian analysts and media as one of Ahmadinejad's closest friends.

Iranian government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham said the shift meant little. "Iran's nuclear policies are stabilized and unchangeable. Managerial change won't bring any changes in policies," he told reporters at his weekly news conference.

But European officials and Iranian analysts say Larijani's resignation is widely being seen as a boost for Ahmadinejad's defiant position, which in the short term could set back talks with Britain, France and Germany on behalf of the United States and the United Nations.

In the longer term, however, the move could hurt Iranian hard-liners, because their failure in negotiations could rally support for a long-stalled new round of punitive sanctions against the country, European officials suggested.

"They're not united. There are controversies. Some are thinking about the consequences, which is what we want to happen," said a European official familiar with the negotiations.

The United Nations has already imposed two rounds of sanctions against Iran for its failure to suspend uranium enrichment, a process used for peaceful nuclear energy that can be subverted to make a bomb. Larijani negotiated a deal to answer questions about an 18-year period in which Iran did not fully inform the U.N. watchdog agency about its nuclear program. The big issues, however, concern Iran's current activities.

Differences between Larijani and Ahmadinejad became visible in March 2006 as the president increasingly encroached on Larijani's areas of responsibility, according to Iran watchers and European officials.

The two men had a public spat in April 2006, when Larijani said Iran was ready for talks with the United States about Iraq, but then was contradicted by Ahmadinejad. A year passed before the first U.S.-Iranian talks began in Baghdad.

"Larijani had resigned repeatedly," Elham said. "Finally, the president accepted his resignation."

But the differences run deeper, analysts and European officials said. The split at the top was evident this month when Hassan Rohani, Larijani's predecessor at the National Security Council, lashed out at Ahmadinejad for positions that he said had hurt Iran.

"Today in the international arena, we are now more than ever under threat. A country's diplomacy is successful when it doesn't allow the enemy to find more allies against it. Unfortunately, our enemies are increasing," Rohani said in a speech, noting France's new alliance with the United States on Iran.

Other prominent Iranians, including former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, also have questioned some of Ahmadinejad's policies.

Ahmadinejad has shown disdain for the talks. "Some losers go and tell [the West] they want to negotiate, and the enemies, because they are trapped in a deadlock, welcome them," he reportedly said recently.

Jalili served as director general in the office of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in 2001. As a deputy minister, he was known as Ahmadinejad's man in the Iranian Foreign Ministry, according to diplomats who have met him.