Who is Ahmadinejad and what is he up to?

Safa Haeri, Iran Press Service:

:…. He is viscerally anti Jew, anti West…This is rooted in his education, his fascination for Hasan al Bana, Gamal Abdol Naser and third worldism, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the late Egyptian leader and the movement that once was the flag ship of developing nations… and above all his total and fanatic belief in Shi’a doctrine”, said an Iranian journalist who knew Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the time he was Mayor of Tehran, commenting the islamo-populist Iranian President who, in less than four months destroyed all the credits – and respect -- his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, a charismatic cleric, had obtained painfully for Iran during the eight years he was in office October. READ MORE

After declaring on 26 October 2005 that “the Zionist Entity”, -- the jargon Iranian officials use to name Israel -- must be "wiped off the map of earth", Mr. Ahmadinejad did it again, by not only questioning the Holocaust, the killing of more than 6 million Jews and the gas chambers, but also calling on Europe, mostly Germany and Austria, the two nations responsible for the massacres during World War II, to provide one or two of their states to the Zionists in order to plant there their nation.

“The Europeans claims that they massacred Jews during World War II, that Hitler killed and annihilated innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that, they condemn that person and throw him in jail, why then not give a parcel of Europe to the Zionists? Why not Germany and Austria gave the Zionist State two or three or what amount of their lands to establish their State there in order to solve the problem once for all. We would support it. Why is that the Europeans wants to impose their will to other powers by leaving a tumour in the Middle East, in the heart of the Muslim world so there is always tension and conflict? Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem that kills innocent Palestinians who have lived in their land for centuries, destroy their houses over their heads? Those people who deliberately assassinate Palestinians are given Peace prizes while the innocent Palestinian is tagged as terrorist”, he said, speaking to the “Al Alam” satellite Television, the 24 hours Arabic service of the State-owned, leader-controlled Iranian Radio and Television.

"You believe the Jews were oppressed, why the Palestinian Muslims should have to pay the price?, added Ahmadinejad, a plain-talking former officer of the Revolutionary Guards who swept to the presidency after a shock election win in June, thanks to the tacit backing of Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the leader of the Islamic Republic and massive mobilization of the ayatollahs’s Praetorian Guard and the Basij (mobilization) militias affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards.

The Holocaust was Nazi Germany's systematic slaughter of an estimated six million Jews between 1933 and 1945.

Official Iranian media frequently carry sympathetic interviews with Holocaust revisionists like Mr. Roger Garaudy, the French philosopher who, from a Communist militant embarrassed Islam and since, is very popular in Iran and other Arab and Muslin nations, where he used to give speeches about his favourite them.

Ahmadinejad also proposed "a referendum in Palestine for all the original Palestinians" to decide on the future of what is now Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, stating that the “majority of the Zionists established in Palestine on the lands and houses belonging to Palestinians have come from very far away”.

But he said "the best solution for the Palestinians is resistance because it would force the enemies of the Palestinians would have to accept the reality and the right of the Palestinian people to have land."

Made before the end of the Islamic Summit hosted by Saudi Arabia in the holy city of Mecca, where leader of 57 Islamic states would debate Saudi Arabia’s King Abdallah’s old proposal aimed at ending the Arab-Israel conflict on the basis of a “Peace for Land” exchange, Ahmadinejad’s new anti-Israeli outburst badly embarrassed the Saudi hosts, trying hard to diffuse the 50 years-old bloody impasse and separate terrorism from Islam by having the Conference to severely condemn “terrorism and fanatism”.

“The reason was simple; he wanted to derail the Conference from taking a moderate stand on the (Middle East) issue, the line the Saudis were planning to open”, said a journalist covering the meeting.

However, what Ahmadinejad said and repeated on the sideline of the Islamic Summit is neither “accidental” nor “spontaneous”. Like it or not, he expresses what many of the participants at the Conference, mostly the Arab ones, also think in their deep heart but stops at telling it openly of fear of losing American’s financial and military assistance, fears that Iran does not have, since it has no ties with Washington.

"Unfortunately this is not the first time that the Iranian leader has expressed outrageous and racist views towards Jews and Israel", said Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Mark Regev, adding, "I hope that these outrageous remarks will be a wake-up call to people who have any illusions about the nature of the regime in Iran".

His remarks were confirmed by Mr. Mohsen Jalilvand, an “expert of international affairs”, telling the semi independent Students News Agency ISNA on 9 December 2005 that “Ahmadinejad said nothing new, as what he says (about Israel) is the official position of the Islamic Republic since 25 years, repeated and reiterated several times”, and added that questions raised by the Iranian President over Holocaust, gas chambers of the final solution are “all issues that everyone one is aware of the propaganda nature and the exaggerations created by the western media controlled by the Zionists”.

“For the lumpen masses of the Arab world, the simples and not have ones, Iran and Ahmadinejad are the champions”, commended Peter Philip, a veteran correspondent of the German State run Radio Deutsche Welle covering the Middle East for the last two decades.

“Ahmadinejad had that gift that from the outset, he went to the world’s most prestigious diplomatic forum (UN’s General Assembly) and bringing his message – which is also that of Khomeini’s Revolution – directly to the ears of the world. After officials and the press in the West, afraid of the victory of the ossoulgerian (principalists, or fundamentalists) failed to isolate the Islamic Republic using Ahmadinejad’s denunciations of the Zionists occupiers of the Qods (Jerusalem, or Israel), the result was thanks of the same western media horns, his message reached the ears of millions of Muslims world over, to the point that now we hear that he has garnered outstanding popularity in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world”, stressed Mr. Mehdi Mohammadi on 10 December 2005 in the hard line “Keyhan” daily, run by Mr. Hussein Shari’atmadari an intelligence officer specialist in interrogating dissidents intellectuals, who is also an advisor to the leader.

Though the hard line daily, in a recent article, insisted that Mr. Ahmadinejad does “not listen” to anyone, including his closest friends to the point to antagonize some of the ruling conservatives, including the Majles, or the Parliament they control, but according to some veteran Iranian political analysts, what Ahmadinejad says and do is part of a wider plan, hatched by a team of experts and advisors around Mr. Khameneh’i aimed at making the Israeli issue an “ordinary one”, starting by breaking taboos and interdictions about Holocaust, extermination camps and the gas chambers -- where perished millions of Jews, abut also gypsies, communists, slaves etc -- as seen by some UN resolutions or laws in several European nations and internally, shut the doors of the country to outside world, bring the nuclear dialogue to an end in order to get out of the NPT and then continue fabrications of the nuclear bomb in peace.

“There are so many different point of views in the world and I’m surprised to see that the Europeans not able to sustain different opinions. They should accept such messages and also Israel must stop playing the innocent one and with that pretext put fire to the entire region”, observed Mr. Hamid Reza Asefi, the Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry’s senior spokesman during his weekly press briefing held on 11 December 2005, answering a question about the indignations expressed at Mr. Ahmadinejad’s last remarks about Israel.

Among the most influential of these “planners”, Iranian analysts name Mr. Ali Larijani, the new Secretary of the regime’s Supreme Council on National Security, also a former Revolutionary Guards officer, his elder brother, Ardeshir, a close advisor of the leader and the conservatives for international affairs and most particularly Hashemi Samare’i, considered a “mentor” to the President, all known to be “staunchly” anti-Israeli.

Ahmadinejad on Thursday repeated his government's rejection of a key compromise touted by the Europeans; under which Iran's uranium enrichment be moved to Russia to guarantee it cannot be secretly used for weapons. Iran would then receive nuclear fuel from abroad to power its reactors. The president insisted enrichment could not be taken abroad. "What are your guarantees that you will supply us with fuel in future?" he asked. "Possibly tomorrow, after we have come to depend on you for energy, you will not give us the fuel at a proper time and price."

"Our people's way is clear. The subject of talks with the European countries and the Energy Agency will be only for the supervision that we will not deviate from peaceful processes," he said. "We will not allow for the talks to touch on our right to get nuclear technology."

Earlier, the Majles had approved a bill urging the Government not respecting undertakings with the IAEA and the European’s trio, namely Britain, France and Germany to apply Additional Protocol of the Non Proliferation Treaty and inspections of nuclear sites by the United Nations nuclear watchdog inspectors in case the nuclear dossier is referred to the Security Council for sanctions.

And further, the Government announced the construction of a second nuclear power plant in the oil-rich province of Khouzestan, where, before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the French had started works for two such plants.

“The Iranian policy under Ahmadinejad is based on the Napoleonian strategy that the best defence is to attack, as seen by the attitude adopted by the Government under Mr. Ahmadinejad on the international arena. When the European Union criticized Tehran over the appalling human rights situation, the Foreign Affairs Ministry immediately summoned the British Ambassador in Tehran to protest “vigorously” the “miserable conditions of Muslims in the EU countries, the discriminations against their faith, desacralisation of their cemeteries and mosques, their arbitrary arrests on the faked allegation of terrorism, their daily public humiliations and insulting etc..”, one analyst pointed out, speaking from Tehran to Iran Press Service on the telephone on condition of not being named.

"He boasts of having broke the clan of senior officials who have occupied key posts ever since the creation of the Islamic Republic and replaced them with new ones, young, revolutionaries, modernizing, educated, honest and hard working, no matter if they are inexperienced”, Keyhan said in a recent article about the personality of Mr. Ahmadinejad, supported firmly by Mr. Shari’atmadari.

“Ahmadinejad is an old fashion hezbollahi who does not fit in the picture of a changed regime and system. Not because others are becoming more moderate or liberals and he remaining authoritarian, not because others have turned their back to the ideals of Khomeini and Ahmadinejad has remained faithful or even not because others are corrupt and he clean, but simply because the others advance their game carefully and with tact, knowing their limits and capacities at home and abroad while Ahmadinejad has no experience, particularly in international matter and lacks finesse and apparently has no vocation for this”, noted another Iran watcher living in the United States, reminding his apparent refusal to use the new VIP plane bought from the Sultan of Brunei and decorated in France at Airbus plants at the cost of more than 200 millions US Dollars.

The silence of the local media on the international indignation over Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israeli outbursts is a clear sign of the malaise among the ruling establishment, with some influential clerics like the Chairman of the powerful Expediency Council Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, defeated at the hands of Ahmadinejad at the last presidential race, former president Mohammad Khatami and former Secretary of the SCNS, Hojjatoleslam Hasan Rohani, backed by some senior ayatollahs, are working hard behind the scene to have him removed before it’s too late.

More than being afraid of an external attack, the clerical establishment fears plans concocted overseas aimed at “exploding” Iran from within, using extremely unsatisfied ethnic and religious minorities that encircles the country, like the Azeris, the Kurds, the Arabs, the Balouch and Turkmens, most of them Sunni Muslims who’s situation is worse than other the Christians, the Jews and the Zoroastrians, religious minorities officially recognized by the Constitution just because they have no status in predominantly Shi’a Iran.

The most serious clash between the two camps occurred during the last session of the Assembly of Experts, an 82 members, all clerics Upper House that has the power of dismissing the leader, with the trio openly expressing fears of seeing Iran becoming more isolated in the world and losing the nuclear game to the Americans and Europeans.

In response, Mr. Ahmadinejad, in a closed session, menaced of making public “terrible facts” left to him by the “attackers”, including 40 US billions foreign debts, 30 billions foreign credits and engagements, 16 billions internal debts, 3 million unemployed, most of them university educated and this question: what happened to the 680 billions that Iran earned from oil in the last years (meaning under the presidencies of both Hashemi Rafsanjani and Khatami)?

The other face of the belligerent policy that has the backing of the leader is to prevent any dialogue with the Great Satan of the United States, at a time that Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born American Ambassador in Baghdad has revealed that he White House has “authorized” him to open up a dialogue with Tehran.

Nevertheless, Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, combined with the United States, European Union and above all Israel's belief that Tehran's nuclear activities are aimed at producing nuclear warheads, have placed Iran in a more conflictual position with the international community.

"I think the statement that was made today by the Iranian president should be a wake up call to all of us around the world", Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said immediately after Ahmadinejad’s latest proposal for the “relocation” of the Jews from “Palestine to Europe”.

"We should do everything we can in order to stop him, and to stop the Iranian effort to develop a nuclear bomb. This country ... will do everything it can in order to destroy the state of Israel", he added.

In the view of some Iranians, the danger with Mr. Ahmadinejad and powerful clerics like Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, -- considered also a mentor to Ayatollah Khameneh’i -- is that he really believes in the doctrine of Mahdi, or the Shi’a’s twelfth imam who went into hiding into a well in the year 941 at the age of eight to come out once the world is saturated with injustice and corruption, something like the situation nowadays, in the view of Mr. Ahmadinejad and some people around him.

In a videotape put on the internet by the Persian-language “Baztab” that belong to Mr. Mohsen Reza’i, the former Commander of the Revolutionary Guards who is the Secretary of the Expediency Council, in a recent meeting with Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, the President had told him that while delivering his speech at the United Nations General Assembly last September, he “saw a light that guided him throughout the speech, nailing the audience to their seats, listening to him explaining the virtues of Mahdi”.

Since his coming to power, Jamkaran, a small locality near the holy city of Qom, the “cradle” of militant Shi’ism, where people believe Mahdi would re-emerge from there, has become a popular site, the Tehran-Qom road becoming a highway, modern hotels have opened there receiving more than 15 millions visitors, mostly poor people going their from far away to demand miracle.

To some Iranian observers, if Ahmadinejad continues with his “sorties”, he might create a strong front made of powerful ayatollahs to demote him”.

“Ahmadinejad is a virtuous of propaganda, he knows very well how to play with ordinary people’s religious superstitions”, explains Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former advisor and close collaborator of Mr. Khatami, the former moderate, open-minded president who, after Mr. Ahmadinejad’s first anti-Israeli statement made at the “World Without Zionism” Forum in Tehran, proposing the “wipe Israel off the map of the earth” and said “a world without Zionists and the United States is both possible and at hand”, warned that “one should not think we are here to model the world according to our liking”.

“In the West, you have the tendency of dividing the Iranian political picture in two groups of reformers and conservatives. But the new, present and prevailing current has nothing to do with the conservatives. It is a cast apart, an ultra radical concept that do not recognise even the framework of the Islamic Republic, recognising only the legitimacy of divine power, not the people. These people, on the basis that they have the last word, that of the Almighty, can decide to kill anyone who opposes them”, he added, quoted by the centrist French daily “Le Figaro” of 10 December 2005.

He is confirmed by another political analyst, telling this online newspaper: “Contrary to that mild-mannered intellectual president of Khatami, this one, Ahmadinejad, is building such a powerful base for himself that no mollah, being it the most powerful and influential, could bring him down”.