IND:  The Green leaders’ offers of compromise stink of desperation and will only reinforce Khamenei’s deeply held beliefs about not compromising under pressure.  Unless this was a prepackaged arrangement, such lopsided offers  will enable Khamenei to outmaneuver and outplay the Green leaders.  At the end, they will not gain  the confidence of the conservatives and will, more than likely, lose the respect of the youth.

Furthering a trend that has been visible for several weeks now, a prominent Iranian opposition leader made conciliatory remarks on Thursday that were apparently aimed at defusing tensions and ending the nation’s political crisis.

So far, however, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not demonstrated a similar willingness to compromise, say Iran experts inside and outside the country.

In an interview posted Thursday on a reformist Web site, Mehdi Karroubi, a candidate in last summer’s presidential election and former speaker of Parliament, seemed to be shifting the blame for the violent postelection crackdown away from Ayatollah Khamenei, offering an alternate target, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a reactionary cleric who heads the influential Guardian Council.

Speaking of Ayatollah Jannati, Mr. Karroubi said: “He says that claims of fraud are totally false and calls it a crime against the nation, but who does not know that he has committed crimes against the revolution, the blood of the martyrs, the imam and the dear people of Iran.”

But even before Mr. Karroubi’s remarks were made public, the nation’s leadership demonstrated anew its threat to meet resistance with unflinching severity. Two prisoners, Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani, 37, and Arash Rahmani Pour, 19, were hanged at dawn, the government announced. They had been convicted on charges of defying God and belonging to armed organizations.

The main reform strategy appears to focus on reaffirming allegiance to the supreme leader, accepting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the head of the government, at least for now, but not backing off any of the charges of election fraud or government-sanctioned violence against civilians. By focusing attention on Ayatollah Jannati, who has rejected all efforts at compromise, Mr. Karroubi added another possible element, appearing to give Ayatollah Khamenei the chance to re-establish himself as an arbiter between the reformers and the hard-liners, some experts said.

“Perhaps this is the contours of the compromise,” said Trita Parsi, president and founder of the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group based in Washington. “Possibly we are seeing a shift in pinning the blame, away from Khamenei, opening the way for him to reciprocate.”