A debate at home

RECENT efforts by Iran’s rulers to define—or to redefine—their foreign policy are puzzling foreign analysts seeking to fathom whether a new direction is being taken. The foreign minister, Muhammad Javad Zarif, recently went on YouTube to stress his desire for a nuclear deal with the West, yet he could not resist citing his country’s “250 years of non-aggression” across the region. The supreme guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, continues to express unremitting bile towards the West, especially the United States; on July 29th he accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.

It seems plain enough that Iran, under a reformist president, Hassan Rouhani, wants a deal over its nuclear programme. An interim agreement has been extended to November, though big doubts remain on a final accord. But it is still uncertain whether that will lead to a more genuine thawing of relations with the West.

While Mr Zarif extols his country’s peaceful intent across the region, nowhere is it acknowledged that Iran’s Quds Force, the praetorian guard of the ubiquitous Revolutionary Guard, has been in the forefront of the Syrian regime’s campaign to defeat the rebels or that, more recently, Iran has been propping up the beleaguered but venal government of Nuri al-Maliki in neighbouring Iraq.

Iran’s official line is that it has no forces in Iraq. Yet on July 5th Iran’s state media published pictures of the funeral of an Iranian pilot killed in Samarra, barely two hours’ drive north of Baghdad. Though Iran does not seek to publicise the extent of its involvement, it nonetheless relishes the chance to secure a place as the region’s superpower, a quest made all the easier by America’s reluctance to get embroiled.

At the same time, Iran’s rulers are conscious of the risk of blowback if they get too deeply sucked into Iraq. They must be queasy about Mr Maliki’s failure to mount an effective military counter-attack against the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now renamed the plain State of the Islam, and by his refusal so far to widen his Shia-dominated government to include more Sunnis or Kurds in senior posts. Yet there is no sign in Tehran of a desire to ditch Mr Maliki. “Iran’s involvement is likely to contribute to the further regionalisation of the conflict,” says Ramzy Mardini, an Iraq expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think-tank. “In the United States there is too much wishful thinking that Iran has decided to ditch Maliki.”

In what seemed at first glance to be a change of heart by Saudi Arabia towards Iran, Mr Zarif was invited in June to talks in Riyadh, the kingdom’s capital. But the countries’ rulers remain deeply suspicious of each other. The visit has yet to happen. By sending 30,000 Saudi troops to the Iraqi border, the Saudi regime reminded the ayatollahs in Tehran that their role in the region should not become too ambitious.

In any case, Mr Rouhani and his friends have to watch their backs at home. The Tasnim News Agency, a new mouthpiece of the Revolutionary Guard, recently published comments accusing Mr Zarif’s team of undermining the national interest by being too kind to the West. If Mr Rouhani and Mr Zarif cannot achieve a nuclear deal to the liking of the supreme leader, the presidency could soon become a lame duck. If that were to happen, the gestures of detente he has made towards Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are likely to prove barren.