Tehran-ology

I believe Matt Duss (via Matt Yglesias) is making a couple of critical errors in this Iran/Soviet Union comparison:

During the Cold War, “Kremlinology” was a term for the practice of attempting to determine the workings of the Soviet government, and which leaders or factions were on the rise or decline at a given moment. U.S. analysts often (and often wrongly) drew clues from such things as who was standing where during the May Day parade, who was lunching with whom, who got the best seats at the Bolshoi Theater.

A couple of stories out of Iran provide good opportunity to argue against a similar sort of approach — call it Tehran-ology — that tries to determine an approach toward Iran based upon perceived political trends among Iranian elites.

[...]

While inviting Iran to the upcoming conference on Afghanistan seems like a prudent move — engaging Iran first on a key area of mutual concern rather than going after the big issues outright — it’s important to remember that [Supreme Leader] Khamenei is the main arbiter of Iran’s foreign policy. Regardless of who is favored at the moment or what trends are extant, as Karim Sadjadpour told Middle East Progress last month, any approach “that aims to ignore, bypass or undermine Khamenei is guaranteed to fail.”

It is indeed true that Ayatollah Khamenei's leadership apparatus has final (and more accurately, appellate) control over Iran's foreign policy, however it's false to argue that the presidency is without clout or efficacy. Iranian presidents - like Rafsanjani in the late 1980s, and Khatami in the late 1990s - have challenged the Leader on matters of economic isolation, domestic security and the freedoms of Iranian citizens.

And Iranian presidents have affected American foreign policy decisions. When, for instance, President Bill Clinton had reason to believe that the Iranians played a role in the Khobar Towers bombing, he ultimately failed to act on that intelligence due to what appeared to be a moderating and reform-minded Iran under Mohammad Khatami. Khatami's presence may have seemed cosmetic at the time, but it wasn't to average Iranians. The victor of this June's presidential election may serve as a telling reflection of Iranian domestic discontent over Iran's position in the world, and more importantly, their dissatisfaction with this regime's inability to improve economic conditions at home.