“… Iran experts say the very caustic, and very public, nature of the debate in Iran over the proposed nuclear deal suggests that the deep divisions cemented by the summer’s disputed presidential election have complicated, if not undermined, the ability to resolve such a major issue…. the problem appears, at least in part, to be politics — local politics.” So reports Michael Slackman in Tuesday’s New York Times. Prospects for any kind of agreement with the West may not be auspicious, because rivals of confrontational President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be trying to outbid him at vehemence.

See also Doyle McManus in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, citing Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations: “There’s been a breakdown in the country’s foreign policy machinery. Iran doesn’t have a foreign policy right now. It has domestic politics, and its foreign policies are just a sporadic expression of that. It’s not sinister; it’s not duplicitous; it’s just incompetent.”