SLATE has a roundup of news about Iran. Here’s an interesting bit about the raids on Iranian opposition forces:

French daily Aujord’hui en France offered two conflicting explanations: It quoted the former head of France’s national anti-terrorist division as saying the raid was a move to please Iranian authorities so as to maintain French influence in the Middle East. On the same page, another expert said the crackdown is a sign that France is realigning its Middle East policy to be more in line with Washington’s.

Take your pick! One reader suggests that (1) Washington expects the mullahs’ government to fall; and (2) this roundup is designed to keep thousands of Islamist opposition figures from converging in Tehran in the aftermath. I hope that’s right, but it seems a bit too pat for me. And given French behavior in the past, “maintaining French influence in the Middle East” seems the safer bet.

This article from Le Monde is also a bit coy about what’s going on, saying that both Washington and Tehran are pleased.

UPDATE: Reader Thomas Briggs emails:

Today’s evening news on French TV station TF1 explained that France indeed does hope to have it both ways, as you say. www.tf1.fr (streaming video at “News” page, and there’s a text article there, too). France has shown the US that it is its most reliable anti-terrorism ally; France has shown Iran that it is willing to crack down on those troublesome exiled dissidents; and now France has positioned itself to play a “mediator” role. The piece also emphasized that the operation, ostensibly a security operation conducted by the French equivalent of the FBI, had actually been cleared at the highest levels of French diplomacy. France can’t lose. But all this was ruined by the story’s lead-in: live, close-up footage of three separate human self-immolations, and one of the women concerned may die. I’m horrified, truly.

I don’t like to watch people burn to death.