It is clear that the Bush administration’s policy of sanctions and tacit threat of war toward Iran has lost all credibility. This became evident as soon as the National Intelligence Estimate released this month contradicted the White House depiction of the Iranian threat. But the report isn’t a total win for Iran. Though it has nullified the threat of war and will embolden Iran in its march toward nuclear self-sufficiency, it may also undermine the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who thrives on international crisis and tension.

President Bush may take comfort in his rhetoric that nothing has changed. Yet, since the release of the NIE, everything has changed. A single intelligence report has done what all of Iran’s protestations could not: It subverted America’s coercive policy. The facts that the weapon design research has been suspended, and that the claim of an imminent threat was exaggerated, have undermined the administration’s case for war at home and abroad. To add to US concerns, a careful reading of the report indicates that Iran has seemingly suspended the weaponisation aspect of its programme but is still constructing an elaborate enrichment infrastructure — one that will give it the option to construct a bomb in the not-too-distant future.

But inside Iran, the NIE may have a negative effect. The silver lining of the report may well be the weakening of Ahmadinejad and his politics of defiance. The president might celebrate the report’s findings as a victory for Iran, but he cannot take credit for it. Nor will it in all likelihood favour him in his ongoing tug-of-war with political rivals. It is not Ahmadinejad’s hard-line rhetoric and uncompromising posture in negotiations that are to credit for the change in Iran’s fortunes. Rather, they come from a decision to halt the nuclear weapons programme that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blessed in 2003, when reformists were in charge. With war no longer imminent, the supreme leader may see less value in Ahmadinejad’s confrontational politics. And he, not the president, has the last word in foreign policy matters.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled for March. Much rides on the outcome. It can either give Ahmadinejad momentum going into the presidential elections in 2009 or turn him into a lame duck. His international grandstanding notwithstanding, Ahmadinejad’s presidency is in trouble. At first glance, the NIE appears to have undermined the Bush administration’s hard-line approach toward Iran. But the irony is that Washington now has the ability to further undermine Ahmadinejad while regulating Iran’s nuclear programme through diplomacy and dialogue.

The US should seize the moment with an offer of comprehensive negotiations between the two countries and the prospect of rapprochement. These carrots will not just diminish the power of hardliners such as Ahmadinejad; it will also provide a mechanism to ensure that Iran complies with its non-proliferation commitments. — The Christian Science Monitor