Word: diplomatics
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...least, let's lay down an opening marker in the negotiations: If you mess with Iran, we have a multitude of ways to mess with you. Just a theory, of course. "We really don't have any real idea about what goes on inside that government," a senior U.S. diplomat told me recently. But it's not implausible, either. "My sense was that Khamenei didn't want to start trouble anywhere else in the world because it might hurt the nuclear negotiations," says Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, author of a recent book about Iran...
...became his lover, and Keyser was caught lying to hide the affair - and hoarding classified documents in his suburban Washington home. Facing jail and with his marriage threatened, Keyser cut a deal, promising to tell all he knew about Taiwan?s intelligence operations. But then the tale of the diplomat, his spook paramour and his wife - also a spy - got even weirder...
Khamenei's pragmatism may explain why the regime is now showing more willingness to negotiate than it has in months. A Western diplomat and Iran expert believes that Khamenei "definitely" had a hand in Ahmadinejad's letter to U.S. President George W. Bush last month, the first effort at a direct high-level contact between the two countries since 1979. After the U.N. Security Council permanent five plus Germany and the E.U. presented Tehran with a package of incentives aimed at persuading Iran to stop enriching uranium, Khamenei authorized the President to call the proposal a "positive step." Ahmadinejad said...
...cleric's allies are sensitive to the perception that Ahmadinejad's celebrity has caused a decline in the Supreme Leader's public profile. "He's not being overshadowed at all," says the official with close ties to Khamenei. But a senior Iranian official and a Western diplomat say Khamenei reprimanded Ahmadinejad for his declaration that Israel should be "wiped off the map," and analysts in Tehran say Khamenei is worried about Ahmadinejad's uneven management of domestic affairs. The Western diplomat says Ahmadinejad is still "on probation"; some Iranians speculate that his unpredictability may force Khamenei to replace him. Says...
...Pakistani cities and towns, and it has halted exploration for minerals. If the conflict persists, it could jeopardize Gwadar's future as well as a proposed oil pipeline from Iran to Pakistan, which would pass through Baluchistan. "Right now it's a low-intensity insurgency," says a Western diplomat, "but it could get very nasty...