iran unfiltered

Kudos to Ray Takeyh, an Iran analyst who in this op-ed piece adds his voice to the chorus that the US should not overlook Iran's domestic situation and human rights violations in order to focus solely on the nuclear issue.  He says:

"The Iran problem is not limited to illicit nuclear activities, and it is somewhat incomprehensible that the United States and other nations can contemplate nuclear transactions with a regime that maintains links to a range of terrorist organizations and engages in brutal domestic repression. Western officials would be smart to disabuse Iran of the notion that its nuclear infractions are the only source of disagreement. Iran's hard-liners need to know that should they launch their much-advertised crackdown, the price for such conduct may be termination of any dialogue with the West. Only through such a policy can the United States advance its strategic objectives while standing up for its moral values."

Takeyh effectively articulates two other points in his piece.  The first is Iran's negotiating strategy:

"In the coming months, Iran will no doubt seek to prolong negotiations by accepting and then rejecting agreed-upon compacts and offering countless counterproposals....To mitigate such calls [for international sanctions], Tehran will sporadically offer to discuss the nuclear issue to whet the appetite of Western powers -- before moving against its remaining domestic detractors. The powers that be in Iran hope that a prolonged and inconclusive negotiating process will cause the West to recoil from criticism, much less impose sanctions over Iran's human rights abuses."

The second is the mindset of the regime hardliners with security-intelligence backgrounds who are running the regime.  Given their current power, it's extremely important to understand where they've come from and where they are planning to go.  The signs are ominous, as Takeyh describes:

"A peculiar trait among Iran's younger generation of conservatives is the extent to which they idealize the early 1980s. Most objective observers of Iran see those years as a time of foreign invasion, ethnic separatism and social division. But the leaders of Iran's security forces and many politicians today, including Ahmadinejad, see a time when the Islamic Republic salvaged its mandate from heaven through devotion and steadfastness. To fend off the forces of secularism and liberalism, their thinking goes, the Republic of Virtue unleashed its reign of terror and, with violence and a cultural revolution, managed to cleanse the nation."