I think they are provoking a response that can then be used domestically to distract and change the subject.

What they're looking for is a message that the revolution is in grave danger, so the Iranians close ranks and unite behind Ahmi.

Just a couple of misc. pieces of note on Iran.

The first one, I don't have a suggestion of what the motive of these two "administration officials" leakers might be about, but I see from google news that the story has spread to quite a few venues. The source is The Washington Times, and that's highly suspicious as to motive:

Hillary Clinton pressed Obama to talk tough on Iran Wed, 07/01/2009 - 11:40am

http://hillary.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/07/01/hillary_clinton_pressed_obama_to_talk_tough_on_iran

The second I just ran across and thought it interesting in the context of some suggesting that we Americans are too irrationally interested in what's going on in Iran because of Israel or whatever:

Africa: Kampala is Boosted By Iran, Messed By Rwanda, S. Africa

Charles Onyango Obbo, 30 June 2009 column, The Monitor, Kampala

Ordinarily, an event 4,374 kilometres away in Tehran wouldn't have significant impact in Uganda.

However, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a friend of President Museveni, who visited him recently. A few days ago, much like the last two rigged presidential elections in Uganda, Ahmadinejad stole votes.....

So back to the anti-election theft protests in Iran. Every time these uprisings against election fraud happen in the third world, we commentators say they are a warning what about lies ahead for voting-fiddling regimes like the Kampala one.

However, the next election comes, it is rigged, there are a few skirmishes here and there lasting 15 minutes, and it's back to business as usual. Indeed, even in Iran, the protests have been crushed. Ahmadinejad will shortly be sworn in.

I think we are surprised that these ballot-robbing leaders survive, because we have been analysing the effects of protests against poll cheating wrongly. The conventional view is that these protests embolden other democrats to oppose the dictator.

However, the opposite also seems to happen. When a Museveni sees the protests in Iran, he prepares better to confront similar reaction to election rigging in his own election in future....

http://allafrica.com/stories/200907010611.html

Yeah very predictable on Tehran's part.

I think internally they are looking for a scapegoat. This is mainly a message directed at the Iranian people, especially the rural ones, that everything is fine and this was all because of western agitation. They need to keep all the unrest to be contained within the cities and not allow it to spread.

But yeah I am sure they are hoping for a response from the west. It would bolster the bogus claims they are making that all the unrest is due to western agitation. As I continually point out to people, even the occasional ones from Iran who I talk to at mt You Tube channel, there isn't much the US can do because of our history with the country of Iran.

For now the regime has weathered the storm but it is far from over and eventually the reformers will prevail. I am not predicting the end of the Islamic Regime in Iran but I think it'll become one more pragmatic, less repressive, more open and outward looking.

Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

Published: July 3, 2009

CAIRO — Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a “velvet” revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran’s disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say.

Reports on Iranian Web sites associated with prominent conservatives said that leading reformers have confessed to taking velvet revolution “training courses” outside the country. Atef, a Web site of a conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully “welcomed being defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension and creating media chaos.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that almost everyone now detained had confessed — raising the prospect that more confessions will be made public....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/world/middleeast/04confess.html

Britain Asks Allies for Help on Employees Held in Iran

By STEPHEN CASTLE and NAZILA FATHI

Published: July 2, 2009

STOCKHOLM —....On Wednesday, Mohammad Khatami, a charismatic former president who remains extremely popular, made his strongest statements yet. He condemned the election, which the government said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent president, won in a landslide, as well as the government crackdown of the protests that followed.

Mr. Khatami called the election “a coup against the republicanism of the system,” and warned, “Do not think that suppressing the protests would put an end to them. They will emerge again but in different forms.”

He also spoke caustically of the mass arrests: “If these people have committed crimes, why are their legal rights as citizens not preserved, why don’t they have access to a lawyer, why are they not tried in a court, why haven’t they been charged?”

This week, the Interior Ministry said it would withdraw the permit for the Combatant Clergy, a political party to which Mr. Khatami belongs, as well as two other reformist parties that have thrown their support behind him in the past.

The number of British Embassy staff members being held remained unclear on Thursday...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/world/middleeast/03iran.html

Biden Suggests US Not Standing in Israel's Way on Iran

New York Times - Brian Knowlton - ‎1 hour ago‎

"Israel can determine for itself — it's a sovereign nation — what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said, ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/us/politics/06biden.html?ref=world

Saudis would ignore Israeli jets en route to Iran: report

AFP - ‎6 hours ago‎

LONDON (AFP) — Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli warplanes flying over the kingdom in any raid on Iran's nuclear sites, The Sunday Times said ...

Iran's Ahmadinejad renews call for live debate with Obama

Xinhua - Mu Xuequan - ‎4 hours ago‎

TEHRAN, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad renewed his call for live debate with the U.S. President Barak Obama, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Sunday.

Ahmadinejad wants to engage the U.S. President Barack Obama in "negotiations" before the international media, Fars said.

"I will go to the United Nations and will invite Obama to negotiations ... in front of the international media, not a sit-down behind closed doors," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

He made the remarks addressing a meeting of medical school deans on Saturday....

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/05/content_11658050.htm

Iran clerics defy election ruling

BBC News - ‎8 hours ago‎

A group of clerics in Iran has called Iran's presidential vote invalid, contradicting official results. The pro-reform group's statement pits it against the ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8134904.stm

Obama talks to NYTimes about Iran, coordinated with Biden statements:

Despite Crisis, Policy on Iran Is Engagement

By David E. Sanger
Published: July 5, 2009

....In an interview with The New York Times, a day before his scheduled departure for Moscow on Sunday, Mr. Obama said he had “grave concern” about the arrests and intimidation of Iran’s opposition leaders, but insisted, as he has throughout the Iranian crisis, that the repression would not close the door on negotiations with the Iranian government.

“We’ve got some fixed national security interests in Iran not developing nuclear weapons, in not exporting terrorism, and we have offered a pathway for Iran to rejoining the international community,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Biden echoed the same themes in an interview conducted in Iraq and broadcast Sunday on the ABC News program....

The administration, meanwhile, has been preparing for two opposite possibilities: One in which the Iranian leadership seeks to regain a measure of legitimacy by taking up Mr. Obama’s offer to talk — a situation that could put Washington in the uncomfortable position of giving credibility to a government whose actions Mr. Obama has deplored — or one in which Iran rejects negotiations. Mr. Obama told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in May that if there were no progress on the Iranian nuclear issue by the year’s end, the administration would turn to other steps, including sanctions. Mr. Obama hinted at an even shorter schedule during the interview on Saturday.

“We will have to assess in coming weeks and months the degree to which they are willing to walk through that door,” he said.

Mr. Obama declined to talk about the preparations for a tougher line. But as he prepared to leave on Sunday for Moscow, he said the United States now had more leverage to pressure Iran because he had succeeded in getting “countries like Russia and China to take these issues seriously,” noting that both had approved stricter sanctions on North Korea.

In his interview, Mr. Biden ventured into what is usually forbidden territory...

Iranian Lawmakers Demand Say on Cabinet, Hinting at a Rift Among Hardliners, published: August 10, 2009

Clerics’ Call for Removal Challenges Iran Leader

August 17, 2009 - By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A group of Iranian clerics has issued an anonymous letter calling Iran’s supreme leader a dictator and demanding his removal, the latest and perhaps strongest rhetorical attack on him yet in the country’s post-election turmoil.

While the impact of the clerics’ letter, posted late Saturday on opposition Web sites, may have been diluted by the withholding of their signatures, two Iranian experts vouched for its authenticity....