Iran's leadership seems as if in a state of political, economic and social denial. Indeed, the statements of Iranian officials suggest either empty arrogance that tries to hide the forest with the trees, or complete inability to contain the successive blows they have suffered and to deal with their consequences. They thus find only denial to justify the failure of a strategy they have spent decades designing and implementing, only to discover that it cannot withstand for long when the world finally decides to confront it. Thus, instead of admitting that obstinacy on the nuclear issue has brought Iran to a state of stifling isolation, that forming political axes and expanding have ruined the country's relations of good neighborliness with the Arabs and most of the world, and that the political games some like to call “pragmatism" no longer fool anyone, we find Tehran announcing a raise in the level of uranium enrichment, clinging to its support of collapsing allies and pretending that everything is fine. And with the United States announcing that it will impose new oil and financial sanctions, to be added to the international sanctions that have nearly broken Tehran's back, dried up its foreign revenues and made it difficult for it to find anyone who would import its oil, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has rushed to disavow the formula of his country's economic reliance on oil exports, describing it as a “trap" inherited from the pre-1979 period. Fearing that he would alone be held responsible for the deteriorating situation, President Ahmadinejad has joined the Supreme Guide in disassociating himself from the policy of reliance on crude oil revenue, and has called for stopping oil exports completely and focusing on building more refineries to meet domestic consumption! But if exporting oil is a “trap", and if priority should be given to the need of Iranians for oil derivatives, why did the Vali-e-faqih, who some Iranian newspapers have described as “infallible", not pay heed to such error until after sanctions were strengthened? Why was exporting oil a “blessing" when it provided billions of dollars for building nuclear reactors, manufacturing missiles and warships, establishing networks of allies and agents and supplying them with funds and weapons? And why did the country's leadership not meet the demands of its people for years to afford the fuel necessary to advance their economy? Such denial also extends to foreign policy, with Iran's repeated failure from Turkey to Syria, and up to Bahrain and Yemen. Thus, Iran's Foreign Minister asserts that the situation in Syria “is beginning to calm down", while all indications point to the fact that Bashar Al-Assad's regime is nearing collapse, and that the Syrian opposition is progressing on the field and may soon succeed at establishing a “safe zone" in the Aleppo Governorate. Despite the resounding failure of Kofi Annan's plan, Iran continues to reiterate its call for “dialogue" between the regime and the opposition in Syria, while it refuses to hold such dialogue inside Iran, and denies the existence of a broad popular base of opposition to its regime, just as it denies the reality of the fact that it is no longer possible to hold any kind of dialogue between the opposition and the rule of the Assad family. Iran has spent a great deal of money on this regime and provided it with the means to survive, and yet today it witnesses its downfall and is unable to save what it considers to be the main link in the chain of its influence in the region. As for Sanaa, which Tehran has tried to entice by all possible means, it has announced exposing an Iranian espionage network and refuses to meet Ahmadinejad's envoy, in protest of his country's interference in its affairs, while Bahrain has succeeded at overcoming the “Iranian rupture" and is working diligently to repair the fabric of peaceful relations within its society. Yet such regression in Iran's regional influence and such floundering in economic and social policies should not reassure anyone to the fact that Iran's “claws" no longer have the ability to cause harm. Indeed, the desire to expand will remain a fixture of the regime of the Ayatollahs for as long as it stands.
