For Iran talks, trying to divine supreme leader’s intent

(Reuters) – When U.S. officials join talks this weekend about Iran’s nuclear program, they

will be armed with profiles developed by intelligence agencies offering insight into what makes foreign leaders

tick.

One key player will not be at the table in

Istanbul, where negotiations are scheduled between Iran and six world powers, but his stamp of approval will be required for any

deal to fly.

“Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has the final word on Iran’s foreign, domestic, and security

policies. He is the ultimate decision-maker,” a U.S. official said.

Since U.S. severed diplomatic ties more than 30

years ago, first-hand observation of Iranian leaders is a rarity for Americans. U.S. spy agencies must rely on the inexact

art of long-distance analysis to profile leaders of an opaque system.

Former U.S. officials and Iran experts say

Khamenei has a deep-rooted suspicion of the West and a streak of insecurity – he rose to power due to his loyalty to the late

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rather than lofty religious credentials.

A sense of inferiority has dogged him over the

years and it would be especially important for Khamenei to be seen as not folding under Western pressure to reach an

agreement, they said.

“There were many much more educated than he and he had to prove himself in a continuing fashion

to those who considered his credentials inferior,” said Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George

Washington University.

“He has always been a balancer. Taking competing interests and finding a way of weighing them

both, which is positive in some ways but also can at times give a sense of vacillation,” said Post, a doctor who founded the

CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior.

The functions of that center are now in a CIA

unit called the Medical and Psychological Analysis Center, where doctors and psychologists produce physical health and

psychological profiles of foreign leaders.

Other leadership analysts in the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, with

degrees in political science, international relations, anthropology and political psychology, also profile foreign leaders

and decision-makers to help U.S. policymakers deal with their counterparts.

The practice of compiling psychological

profiles of foreign leaders from afar has engendered occasional skepticism.

One substantive criticism, a former

intelligence official said, is that the profiles sometimes are so general in describing a leader’s personality that they are

of little help to decision-makers. There is also a “so what” element to knowing a leader’s psychology because U.S. officials

must react to their actions rather than personality, another former official said.

PROFILING POWER

Intelligence

analysts read what is being written in the leader’s home country, analyze speeches, study reactions to other crises and

incorporate information from defectors to create profiles to help U.S. officials frame and discuss issues.

They look

at forces that shaped the leader: family background, successes, failures, crisis decision-making, and the leader’s

relationship with the inner circle.

Currently, the U.S. intelligence assessment is that Iran has not made the decision

to build a nuclear weapon, and experts say it is Khamenei, 72, who would make that call.

But even if the United States

had great access to Iran, the intentions of one man are not easy to discern.

“It’s important to keep in mind that

these analysts are trying to assess complex human beings, including all the outside factors that might influence them,” the

U.S. official said.

One question about Khamenei’s intentions is his stated view that nuclear weapons are a

sin.

Some experts shrug it off, saying the Iranian leader could issue a new religious edict if it suits a changing

circumstance.

But Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA analyst, sees the proclamation as a potentially hopeful sign for

nuclear talks.

“It gives him an out,” said Pillar, a Georgetown University professor. “He is on record as having made

a statement that would not make it shameful or a sign of weakness to come to an understanding with the West … that clearly

rules out a nuclear weapon.”

WHAT MAKES THEM TICK

Leadership analysts look for what makes the person tick to

determine what would be a hot button, what would elicit anger, rapport, understanding, and subtexts such as political

ambition.

U.S. analysts widely believe Khamenei squashed a tentative nuclear agreement that Iranian negotiators

brought home from meetings with Western officials in 2009.

But he is now operating in a more divisive political

climate which might have taken some toll on his power base, experts say.

“One of the great questions we have is even

if he (Khamenei) decided today let’s give up the nuclear program, let’s cut the deal, could he make it stick?” said Jon

Wolfsthal of the center for nonproliferation studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.

“Does he

really have all the power that we think he does? That is not clear.” said Wolfsthal, a former adviser to Vice President Joe

Biden on nuclear security.

While Khamenei says Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, he has insisted that others respect

Iran’s civilian nuclear rights.

Standing up for injustice and for Iran’s rights is central to how he looks at the

nuclear issue and should be considered in how the West frames its approach so that it allows him to save face, a former U.S.

government Middle East expert said.

INTERNAL VIEWS

Policymakers also bring their own, sometimes flawed,

knowledge and understanding about foreign leaders from associating with them. That can lead to friction when they disagree

with the intelligence profile.

For example, the VIP medical team at the CIA did an assessment of Jean-Bertrand

Aristide during former President Bill Clinton’s administration that made the Haitian president sound like a “nut” and became

fodder for his opponents in the U.S. Congress, a former intelligence official said. That irritated the Clinton

administration.

It was a misreading of the profile because the CIA psychiatrist did not think Aristide was crazy, but

meant he was unusual as anyone who reached such a position would be.

Khamenei has been in office for a long time “so

we have accumulated a lot of knowledge of his world view,” said Ellen Laipson, president of the Stimson Center think

tank.

“On the one hand we see him as a figure who doesn’t really trust the international system, doesn’t trust the

United States, but he is also not extremely reckless,” said Laipson, a former vice chair of the National Intelligence

Council.

Retired U.S. diplomat John Limbert met Khamenei – but under trying circumstances in 1980 when he was held

hostage in Iran.

Khamenei asked how things were and Limbert’s reply in Farsi was a not-so-subtle dig about Iranians

being famous for their hospitality.

“He really wasn’t trying to convert me to anything. He didn’t have the kind of

complexes and resentments that you found on some of the revolutionaries,” recalled Limbert, now a professor on the Middle

East at the U.S. Naval Academy.

The Iranian leader’s overarching concern now is one shared by the powerful

everywhere. “For Khamenei, like his colleagues, the priority is political survival,” Limbert said.

(Editing by Warren Strobel and Mohammad Zargham)