Ahmadinejad vs. Iran

In the unfortunate tendency to see the Middle East in black and white, it is usually overlooked that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is just as aggressive in Iranian internal politics as he is on the international stage--and he has piled up enemies at home as well as abroad. He's been under increasing domestic pressure since the U.N. adopted Resolution 1737 last month calling for sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. Tehran newspapers even from the conservative camp to which Ahmadinejad generally belongs are criticizing his fiery anti-Western policies for having provoked the West into punishing Iran.
Last month in Tehran, a senior conservative leader who opposes Ahmadinejad frankly predicted to me that the president wouldn't make it through his four-year term--that the Iranian parliament would vote to remove him from office. That may be stating it too strongly, but there's no doubt that Ahmadinejad faces intense domestic political opposition on a number of counts.
Apart from reformists who are against him on ideological grounds, there is the powerful conservative faction loyal to Ayatullah Akbar Hamhemi Rafsanjani that believes Ahmadinejad cheated Rafsanjani out of the presidency in the 2005 election. Ahmadinejad ran for president with the backing of the Abadgaran, religious conservatives who felt shut out of the corridors of power, but Ahmadinejad alienated many of the group's figures by refusing to dole out patronage jobs to Abadgaran loyalists. In forming his first cabinet, Ahmadinejad had to nominate three oil ministers before one was accepted by the parliament. Ahmadinejad's conservative foes have continued to fight him; his candidates fared poorly in last month's municipal council elections.
Ahmadinejad, the first non-cleric to become president in two decades, also antagonized the Islamic establishment. Last year his proposal allowing women to attend soccer matches met fierce resistance in the form of fatwas from Shiite Muslim clerics; Ahmadinejad only backed down when Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei sided with the mullahs. The biggest threat to Ahmadinejad, however, is anger with egalitarian economic policies-- curbs on interest rates, for example--that are causing spikes in inflation. Discontent over the economy is uniting the politicians and growing numbers of ordinary Iranians against him.
Ahmadinejad believes in his own rhetoric, but part of the reason for his hard-line bombast is to motivate his core supporters and broaden his populist base over the heads of the political class. But this has got him into trouble even with conservatives from the start, notably when his remarks about wiping Israel off the map caused a huge international backlash. Khamenei rebuked him for that, too, and Ahmadinejad had to clarify his position within the official line, which is that Israelis and Palestinians should have a referendum on whether they want to continue living in a Jewish state or not. Conservative insiders told me at the time that the Leader didn't necessarily disagree with Ahmadinejad's comments but feared his antagonistic style was unnecessary and counter-productive.
Khamanei not Ahmadinehad holds the cards in Iran, and has shown himself to be a pragmatist who has little interest in inviting a military confrontation with the U.S. Ahmadinejad for his part has proved himself to be a staunch Khamenei loyalist who will not challenge the Leader's bottom line. The problem for Khamenei is that he and Ahmadinejad are so close to each other politically that he risks a collapse in his own popularity if Ahmadinejad's polls go south. The mounting conservative pressure on Ahmadinejad indicates a desire to tone down the confrontational approach. But it doesn't suggest any backtracking on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and it remains far from clear that Khamenei would countenance a parliamentary move to ditch Ahmadinejad altogether. That would smack of capitulation to the West. If nothing else, Iran has shown its determination over the years to hold fast even if its near-term interests are undermined.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo