Reporting from Cairo and Beirut — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can in one instant appear the diplomatic equivalent of damaged goods and in the next a confident leader whose bellicose speeches leave the West wondering how to deal with him and his perplexing nation now that he's won a much-disputed reelection.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev publicly greeted Ahmadinejad at a recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but did not grant him a private meeting as he had the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Belarus, the Iranian leader was met not by President Alexander Lukashenko, but by the speaker of the upper house of parliament.
A similar pattern has emerged in the Middle East, where Arab regimes have long been wary of Iran's ambitions. Authorities in Jordan withdrew licenses for two Iranian news organizations this week and the sultan of Oman reportedly canceled a trip to Tehran following the unrest after Iran's June 12 election.
Snubs and slights in the diplomatic world are common, sometimes almost imperceptible. But as long as Ahmadinejad remains in power, with the support of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there are concerns about how the messy fallout over his reelection will influence diplomacy regarding Iran's nuclear program, regional stature and relations with the U.S. and Europe.
Tehran's crackdown on dissent and its accusations of Western meddling have led the Obama administration, which had sought to open dialogue with Iran, to toughen its tone. The European Union is contemplating recalling its ambassadors unless Iran releases the last three of nine Iranian employees of the British Embassy arrested over the weekend.
Ahmadinejad's anti-Israeli comments and Tehran's spats with U.N. nuclear inspectors have ignited anger in the West over the years, but the current crisis is evoking deeper criticism over Iran's tactics and intentions. It is apparent that the West and Iran are peering through separate prisms: As Britain argued for the release of its employees, a commander of the Revolutionary Guard threatened that Iran would pull out of talks over its nuclear program unless the European Union would "apologize" for interfering.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Iran's arrest of the embassy employees was "completely contrary to the sort of good political engagement that Iran says that it wants."
