It's a craft

I read Sidddharth Varadarajan’s opinion on the U.S.-Iran issue in The Hindu on Friday. He has the same article with useful links on his blog. It’s an interesting analysis of the diplomatic wrestling going on at present. My favourite part –

Sitting in his Teheran office in August 2005, Mr. Ahmadinejad could be forgiven for believing in the inevitability of American sanctions and eventual use of force. The hopes in liberal Iranian circles that France, Germany, and Britain would come up with a credible formula for the resolution of the nuclear question were dashed when the E-3 produced their limp proposal of August 5. Rather than sitting back and allowing Washington to calibrate the pace and extent of crisis escalation, President Ahmadinejad probably surmised that Iran's best chance of avoiding the fate that befell Iraq lay in escalating the crisis on its own terms.

The rhetoric against Israel last fall, the resumption of enrichment experiments in January this year, and the declaration that Iran has mastered the technology and is now a "nuclear nation" would have made no sense to a Mossadegh. But to a leader convinced about the inevitability of an American military attack, it was a high-risk gamble that appears to have paid off. By bringing the crisis to a boil at a time when Washington has neither the military nor diplomatic capability to launch an attack — let alone persuade the world to impose sanctions — President Ahmadinejad has, paradoxically, increased his country's room for manoeuvre.

Incidentally I was holding an English translation of Chanakya’s Arthashastra yesterday and thinking whether or not I should get it. I am totally awed by the skills of such people who live by the sheer thrills of sharp diplomatic manoeuvres. Mostly because I think I’m utterly incapable of the same.