What stick? Whose carrots?

It has been almost a year since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's surprise victory in the presidential elections of Iran. Mr Ahmadinejad, you may remember being assured by some members of the international commentariat, should not have lasted more than a few months: He is now more popular in Iran than a year ago.

Successive statements by Mr Ahmadinejad, denying the Holocaust and threatening the annihilation of Israel, coupled with Iran's nuclear programme, were supposed to lead to Iran's international isolation: This week we learned that the "rogue state" is more of a charming rascal. Iran did very well for itself at last weekend's meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a pan-Asian economic and security group of states in which Russia and China are dominating actors.

Both Russia and China have made warm statements about the convergent interests of their respective national economy and Iran's. It has not stopped there. Iran has been busy making friends and influencing people in the various Turkic states around Russia, as well as in India and Pakistan, with whom Iran hopes to construct a gas pipeline.

Iran, besides being the world's second-largest oil exporter, after Saudi Arabia, also has the second-largest reserves of gas: a matter of strategic importance for India and China's fast-growing economies. As for Russia, collaboration with Iran would probably lead to a dominating control over energy supplies to third parties like, oh, the European Union.

This background on its own makes the threats of international isolation of Iran sound just that little bit hollow. Hoisting Iran before the UN Security Council - and doing something serious - would require the votes of Iran's current big buddies, China and Russia. You just have to wonder about those Western pundits and policy wonks who keep talking - often among themselves - about a judicious use of carrot-and-stick policy towards Iran. Where's the stick? Who's holding the carrots?

Pop those questions and you are likely to be given a lecture about "the Libyan model": How Libya was coaxed into giving up its programme of building up an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in return for a welcoming return into the international community. But are we that sure that Iran is not following the Libyan model, after all?

The prime lesson of the Libyan experience is that if a state threatens to build up its WMD, it can negotiate better terms of re-entry into the international community. Muammar Gaddafi was reported as saying something to this effect some time before giving up Libya's WMD programme. The Libyan case may be convoluted, but there is no doubt that the lesson that has been drawn, in many parts of the Arab world, is that WMD help you negotiate your own terms.

In fact, it has not been lost on certain Arab commentators, particularly those based in the Gulf, that Iran's nuclear programme is a greater threat, in practice, to the Gulf Arab states than to Israel. A nuclear Iran would find it very risky to move from bluster to belligerence with regard to Israel. But it would find it easier to throw its weight in its own region - confident that its anti-US stance is more likely to win it respect in the Arab street than the Gulf principalities, dependent on US protection, do.

I have been surprised by Arab friends who have not hesitated to exclaim, "Hats off to Iran!" in conversation with me. These are Arab democrats, secular to a fault. They have no difficulty in finding the Iranian regime, hardliners and clerical reformists, to be corrupt and oppressive. But the lesson of "the Libyan model" that they have drawn is the one I have indicated, and not any other one.

At street level, that lesson has been reinforced by other developments. One is the decision by Western governments to impose sanctions on the Hamas-led Palestinian government: an opportunity has been opened for Iran to provide substantial aid. According to some estimates, Iran is currently the largest state donor.

Iran's current regime is nasty, brutish, but alas not likely to be short-lived. It is an unpopular government within Iran: Mr Ahmadinejad's personal popularity is due in large part to his rhetorical attacks on elite corruption. Recently, however, even he felt he had to strengthen his electoral base, among the middle classes, by allowing women to attend football matches (a move that failed only after the intervention of the country's "supreme guide" but which unleashed several supporting opinions from moderate clerics in the meantime).

According to Ziba Mir-Husseini, an Iran expert who has recently written for the Middle East Report, "What the hardliners in Iran need in order to survive is an outside enemy, and the Bush administration, with its broad hints at intervention, has been playing into their hands". There is no easy alternative. But there has to be a better one.

ranierfsadni@europe.com