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Foreign Policy: As Iran votes, all quiet on the western front:
Official Washington is laying low and saying little as tectonic plates appear to be shifting in the run-up to Iran's presidential elections, to be held Friday.
Despite dramatic images this week of the largest campaign demonstrations taking place in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, including a human chain of as many as a million supporters for former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate, the Obama administration has remained largely silent. The last thing officials want to do is say anything to jinx a process underway in Iran whose outcome is entirely outside of their control -- and yet may ease one of their most pressing challenges.
A Mousavi win would not mean smooth sailing for Washington's efforts to engage Iran, analysts caution. It could deepen fissures in the Iranian leadership or even prompt a hard-line backlash or crackdown that could further paralyze U.S. efforts to engage Iran, they say. But the voting out of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would undoubtedly be seen in Washington and the West as a welcome sign that the Iranian public supports greater liberalization and a less hostile attitude toward the West.
"We are committed to direct diplomacy with whatever government emerges," a U.S. official said Wednesday on condition of anonymity. The administration is "being tight-lipped on this one," he acknowledged, noting that some planned interviews on the issue had been shut down out of apparent sensitivity to concerns that Iranian hard-liners could portray them as evidence of U.S. meddling, a sensitive issue in Iran.
"We take what we get," a White House official said Monday, seeking to downplay the import of the outcome of Iran's polls. "It's clear the Iranian president has limited influence, either for better or for worse," he said. "So even were Ahmadinejad to lose, there will not suddenly be flowers blooming" in Washington's efforts to engage Iran.
"They have nothing to gain by suggesting that they favor any outcome," explained Brookings Institution Iran expert Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department policy planning official, referring to the U.S. government. "One can't plan for what the outcome will be," Maloney added. "It will be decided for us. What impact it has on the process for negotiations [between Washington and Tehran] will play out for weeks, if not months."
"It's not simply that the outcome is unpredictable," Maloney continued. "It's that the impact is not wholly straightforward. You could have a reformist win that revives a power struggle that returns the Iranian position on engagement to one dominated by paralysis." ...