Iran's internal struggle damps hopes for dialogue

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The struggle by Iran's hardline leaders to quell dissent after a fiercely disputed election bodes ill for U.S. President Barack Obama's offer of direct engagement to overcome 30 years of mutual rancor.

And the darker prospect of military action resurfaced when Vice-President Joe Biden declared on Sunday that Israel had a sovereign right to determine what is in its interest in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions, whether Washington agreed or not.

Iran says its nuclear work is purely for civilian purposes and the incoming head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said last week he had seen no evidence to the contrary in the U.N. nuclear watchdog's official documents.

Obama has made clear the door to talks remains open, despite his concern about the aftermath of Iran's June 12 presidential poll, marked by the dispersal of mass protests, the arrest of hundreds of reformist figures and threats to put them on trial.

"We've got some fixed national security interests in Iran not developing nuclear weapons, in not exporting terrorism," he told The New York Times on Saturday. "And we have offered a pathway for Iran to rejoining the international community."

But the chances of a positive response from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his passionately anti-Western protege, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, look dubious.

"By mishandling the election badly, the hardliners did maintain state power, but lost a lot of negotiating power," said Farideh Farhi, a visiting scholar at the University of Hawaii.

She said Iran's leaders faced two awkward options. Until domestic turmoil had calmed, decision-making might be paralyzed.

"Not wanting to negotiate from a position of weakness, they may not want to sit at the same table with the U.S. for a while," Farhi told Reuters. "Alternatively, they may want to do the opposite and, by making a deal with the U.S., regain the legitimacy they have lost on the domestic front."

The re-election of Ahmadinejad -- in a vote his critics say was rigged, but which Iranian officials hail as glorious -- may put pressure on Obama to toughen his approach to Tehran.

"It really supports hardline policies in the West," said John Raines, deputy director of political risk at the London-based consultancy Exclusive Analysis.

"It allows for the imposition of new sanctions or for hardline rhetoric, which will be easier to propagate without an accommodating figure within the Iranian presidency."

Obama has raised the possibility of further sanctions on Iran if its leaders refuse to engage on the nuclear issue.

"We will have to assess in the coming weeks and months the degree to which they are willing to walk through that door," The New York Times quoted him as saying in an interview.

MILITARY ACTION SEEN UNLIKELY

Raines saw the threat of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran's atomic facilities as remote, at least in the short term.

"It's hard for me to imagine that Obama is bent on some kind of military action within the foreseeable future," he said, citing U.S. priorities in stabilizing Afghanistan and Iraq.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon acknowledged the complexity and risks of a military operation, but said neither America nor Israel could tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran.

Raines said the Israelis would have already attacked Iran's dispersed and fortified nuclear sites "if they believed they had the capability and would not suffer the consequences."

Mossad intelligence chief Meir Dagan last month put back Israel's estimate of when Iran could acquire the bomb to 2014, urging the world to do more to slow Tehran's progress.

Iran is already under three sets of U.N. sanctions for defying a Security Council demand to halt uranium enrichment, a process to make fuel for power plants or, potentially, bombs.

The United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany have invited Iran to nuclear talks. Tehran has refused.

Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian American Council and who has advocated U.S. dialogue with the Islamic Republic, said Ahmadinejad's re-election had given Obama a dilemma.

"The Iranian opposition argues that the election is not over and that the U.S. should not recognize Ahmadinejad as president. On the other hand, the nuclear clock keeps on ticking.

"The reality is, however, that the Iranians are unlikely to reach any particular technical milestone in the next few months," Parsi said from Washington. "The president can afford to pause the diplomatic outreach to Iran for a while."

Iran has given Obama few public hints of flexibility.

"Ahmadinejad and hardliners in the Revolutionary Guards have indicated they do not think Iran should compromise on important issues such as the nuclear program," said Alireza Nader, an analyst at the Washington-based RAND Corporation.

But limited U.S-Iranian cooperation was not impossible.

"There are still some 'pragmatic' voices within the Iranian national security establishment that may be open to working with the United States on very specific issues, such as maintaining stability in Afghanistan," Nader argued.

(Editing by Dominic Evans)