With news of U.S. and Iranian ships passing uncomfortably close in the night off the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, it's time once again to consider what's on the minds of the power-brokers in Tehran. Was the incident the result of rogue Revolutionary Guard ship commanders or part of a deliberate escalation by Iran? That the incident was announced by the Pentagon is noteworthy, as Iran might have been expected to toot its own horn, were it proud of the maneuvers. (Think of the drama it whipped up over the British seamen captured in the same waterway back in 2007.) This time, the official line from Tehran is that this was the "normal" kind of bumper-to-bumper traffic in the strait.

This is the foreign policy parlor game that used to be called "Kremlinology" during the old Cold War, and has no name at all now. But all intelligent guessing aside, one thing is clear: as a contentious symbol in the struggle between reformists and conservatives in Iran, America remains without peer. In legislative elections scheduled for March 14, conservative supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are attempting to maintain their dominance by appealing to a sense of nationalism -- specifically touting the president's success in countering U.S. threats and "intimidation." For their part, the reformists are playing on the suspicions of many Iranians that Ahmadinejad's provocations risk too much in the service of too little.

While the reformists have been distracted in recent days by the usual controversies over who can vote (the conservative parliament just passed a bill raising the voting age) and which of their candidates can run (an unelected government body can toss out any candidate deemed to be insufficiently "qualified"), the conservatives have, appropriately enough, had their analytic eyes trained on America.

Here's the revealing close to an otherwise windy tract in the January 5 edition of Iran's conservative Jomhuri-ye Eslami:

"Due to the continuous failures of the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan, the circumstance is extremely difficult for the Republicans inside America. The situation is so dramatic in the Republican camp that an unknown candidate like [Gov. Mike] Huckabee has won the internal Republican election [referring to the Iowa caucus]. Huckabee's victory sends this message to Bush and his administration that they have lost their popularity even amongst their own party members. The Democrats have also faced a similar situation. Due to their failure to take the Bush administration into account the people do not trust the main body of the Democrats anymore. ... The victory of Obama and Huckabee proves the failure of both leaders of the two main parties in America and a gradual deterioration of America's power in general."

The purpose of such agit-prop is unmistakable. To any voters worried about American reprisal in the face of Iran's nuclear policy, the message from Ahmadinejad's forces is that the U.S. electorate is sure to blink first and change political course -- like a ship in the strait -- as part of an increasing powerlessness. Therefore, a tack in the direction of Iran's own "agents of change" in the legislative elections would be not only unnecessary, but the renunciation of a great victory. In this light, it's not hard to understand how the decision to instigate some mischief on the Strait of Hormuz might have been conceived. And while there's no guarantee such stunts will continue to work on Iran's voters, Iran's conservatives must privately be weeping over the coming end to the era of such ready-made propaganda in the Bush 43 years. Just as we no longer have an analogue for "Kremlinology," so, too, will they be forced to discard some expired political language at approximately this time next year.