TEHRAN, 24 June 2006 — He may be viewed in the West as a pariah figure, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to enjoy a strong stature at home, analysts say. In the year that has followed his shock election win last June, the austere hard-liner has stood up to Western demands to limit his country’s nuclear program, called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” — or moved as far away as Alaska — and dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth.”
But inside Iran, he has roused nationalist sentiment and pushed through a populist economic agenda — and for the time being there appears to be no threat to his position as the Islamic government’s No. 2 behind supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “In the provinces, everybody turns out for his appearances,” an Iranian political observer commented on the president’s rock festival-style rallies across the country.
“The government’s loans for marriages or rents represent a lot of money for the poorer classes in the countryside or small towns,” said the analyst, who preferred not to be named. “He’s definitely been growing in confidence and stature,” added an Iranian newspaper editor. “We don’t have presidential approval ratings in Iran, but if we did, Ahmadinejad would certainly look very comfortable.”
After winning the June 24, 2005, vote — and trouncing the veteran moderate conservative cleric and favorite Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — Ahmadinejad promised a “new Islamic revolution.”
“The era of oppression, hegemony, tyranny and injustice is ending,” he declared, vowing “the wave of the Islamic revolution will soon strike the whole world.” He has certainly had an impact: on the nuclear case, he has positioned himself alongside other entrenched hard-liners who resist international demands to halt uranium enrichment activity — which Iran says it wants to use to make reactor fuel and not weapons.
In April, he announced that Iran had “joined the world’s nuclear club” by managing to enrich uranium, and has since shrugged off any threat of US military action.
“The Iranian people are generally very supportive of the nuclear program,” said the newspaper editor, who also preferred not to be named.
“Ahmadinejad has been drumming up national pride, and this is working. Even many Iranians who are hostile to him are in favor of the nuclear program — and this means the government is extremely confident in its position.”
Meanwhile, Iran said yesterday suspending uranium enrichment would be neither a precondition for talks with world powers on its suspect nuclear activities nor an outcome of those discussions.
“Iran considers that suspension is neither a precondition to nor the result of negotiations,” Javad Vaidi, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told AFP.
The five permanent UN Security Council members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany have offered Iran a package of incentives if it agrees to temporarily halt uranium enrichment.
Vaidi was speaking by telephone from Vienna, where he said Thursday night that having nuclear weapons “would go against the national interest of Iran’s security.”
