Any way you alice it, a major reshuffle (and a possible realignment).

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani has resigned, officials said Saturday, fuelling fears Tehran will take an even tougher line in the crisis with the West on its contested nuclear drive.

Analysts said the resignation of Larijani — a conservative but by no means a political ally of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — would help the Iranian president further consolidate his grip on policy-making.

Larijani is to be replaced by deputy foreign minister Saeed Jalili, the government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham announced. Jalili is seen, by contrast, as a close confidant of the president,

“Larijani had resigned several times and finally the president accepted his resignation,” state news agency IRNA quoted Elham as saying.

Jalili will take up his post, whose official title is secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, on Sunday, Ahmadinejad’s senior advisor Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi told IRNA.

However Larijani is to join his successor to participate in talks on Iran’s nuclear programme with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Rome on Tuesday, Elham said.

Rumours have been circulating in Iran for months that Larijani was at odds with Ahmadinejad over the hardline president’s confrontational style of presenting nuclear policy and had offered to resign.

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Larijani, who took on his post after Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005, has led two years of sensitive talks with EU officials over Iran’s nuclear programme.

He replaced the moderate negotiating team which had served under reformist president Mohammad Khatami and reversed the suspension of uranium enrichment that had been agreed with EU powers.

But Larijani’s wordy and relatively moderate rhetoric always contrasted starkly with the populist president’s confrontational and sometimes provocative statements on the nuclear standoff.

The resignation came a day after Ahmadinejad flatly contradicted a statement by Larijani that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made a proposal to Tehran over its nuclear programme during his landmark visit to Iran last week. Article

More — quickie overview and analysis:

Since his election in August 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has failed to keep most of his promises, especially in the economic field.

The firebrand leader has at all costs however clung to his political showpiece - Iran’s decisive and unanimously-backed atomic policy, which has set the Islamic republic on a collision course with the West owing to suspicion it is aimed at developing nuclear arms.

Therefore the resignations of six of his cabinet members - the central bank chief, the ministers for cooperatives, mines and metals, oil and social affairs as well as the vice-president and head of the planning and budget organization - attracted little international attention.

The resignation of his national security chief and top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani is however a major development, both at home and abroad, and looks set to harm the momentum of his atomic policies.

‘How can Ahmadinejad claim that the nuclear matter is a national issue and unanimously supported by 70 million Iranians if his top nuclear negotiator resigns?’ said a Western diplomat in Tehran.

Despite attracting global interest, state Iranian television only carried Larijani’s resignation as its third-ranked news item, indicating perhaps the government’s wish to play down its significance domestically.

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Little is known about Jalili except that he is one of the new faces in the foreign ministry and has a promising diplomatic career. Even local photographers had difficulty finding a file picture of the new man, whose job might even be more sensitive than that of the foreign minister.

Jalili is expected to lead the Iranian delegation in the talks with Solana on October 23 in Rome, although the National Security Council has not yet confirmed this. An alternative would be Larijani’s deputy, Javad Vaeidi, who also leads Iran in the talks with the IAEA.

‘Larijani’s resignation and Jalili’s appointment will have more internal rather than external impact as the nuclear issue is a state matter and therefore decided within a collective led by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,’ a political observer in Tehran said.

‘More important is how Ahmadinejad wants to explain to the public at home why his one of his most important men quit the president’s administration and a why political newcomer is taking charge of one of the country’s most sensitive jobs,’ he added.

Observers believe that Jalili is expected to adopt the same line with Solana as his predecessor, but many question whether he will have the same charisma and diplomatic skills as Larijani. Article