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" That&amp;#039;s what a lot of folks tell me, anyway. Therefore, thanks to the invaluable Juan Cole, it&amp;#039;s interesting to note that this whole Syria tangle is screwing them up a little, too, in no small part because the Iranians themselves have more than a little recent experience with poison gas. The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran are sensitive to poison gas use, since the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq deployed mustard gas against Iranian troops during the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-1988. (Ed. Note: wonder how that happened.) Many Iranian veterans still suffer from burning lungs and other bad health effects of exposure. It is a sore issue with the older leadership of the army and the Revolutionary Guards. Even a representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, such as the Iranian representative at the UN, Mohammad Khazaei , felt it necessary to condemn the use of poison gas in Syria. Some Iranian spokesmen have taken up the same line as Russia, that the rebels gassed themselves, though this conclusion is absurd on the face of it and contradicted by French, British, US and Israeli intelligence, including telephone intercepts that make it clear that the Syrian military deployed the gas. Khazaei was non-committal in his statement, saying that the UN inspectors should be allowed to do their job. However, the UN inspectors are not charged with identifying the perpetrator, only with determining if poison gas was used and if so, what kind. If the Iranian government is split on this whole matter, then there would seem to be an opportunity here, and not one that&amp;#039;s exploitable simply by blowing things up. The Iranian elite seems starkly divided. The Supreme Leader is backing the Syrian regime to the hilt. But the reform faction, as exemplified by Rafsanjani, despises the Baathist dictatorship and is disgusted by the regime&amp;#039;s use of toxic gas on its own people. It may have been only an accident that Rafsanjani&amp;#039;s remarks were recorded on a cell phone and became known. He has embarrassed Khamenei and had to retract his statement. It is also not impossible that Rafsanjani was deliberately embarrassing Khamenei, in a minor sort of way (he was speaking at a small town in the northern province of Mazandaran). Rafsanjani supported the Green Movement of 2009, which demanded more personal liberties from Khamenei and disputed the official story that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had easily won a second term. He was slapped down by Khamenei and his fanatical devotees, and the Green Movement was repressed. Rafsanjani could just be taking revenge on Khamenei by condemning Iran&amp;#039;s policy of supporting al-Assad no matter what. The implication of what Rafsanjani said, after all, is that Khamenei is supporting a dictator guilty of crimes against humanity.  There also seems to be a chance for the United States to do more than rattle sabers at Iran -- which was the one unifying foreign-policy principle among the Republican presidential candidates in 2012, and likely will be in 2016, too -- and, in fact, do something to strengthen the forces of what passes for reform in the Islamic Republic. Those hopes may well be premature: even if Mr. Rouhani and his foreign minister are eager for a deal ending the dispute over the future of Iran&amp;#039;s nuclear program, it is far from clear that they would be able to deliver one. Negotiations have been stalled since last year, and final authority on foreign policy rests with Ayatollah Khamenei. The Iranian president&amp;#039;s hand, whatever his politics, is weakened further during national security crises, analysts say, and hard-liners are likely to be empowered. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Rouhani - who has declared his goal of resolving tensions with the West and bringing &amp;quot;more transparency&amp;quot; to nuclear talks - is vulnerable to domestic conservatives, who still blame him for having signed an agreement in 2003 opening Iran to United Nations inspectors. If Rouhani is sincere, then there&amp;#039;s nothing to be lost in strengthening his position against the hard-liners in his own government, especially if we&amp;#039;re about to engage in a military action that&amp;#039;s liable to inflame the latter. I have no illusions about Iran, but you back the horse you have. If this whole thing in Syria is also about Iran, then there has to be more to it than simply blundering around like a blind elephant. Or, of course, you could just yell, &amp;quot;Munich!&amp;quot; a lot and forget the whole business. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19394/iran-piece-of-syria-puzzle-090313/>