DOSSIER: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iran's increasingly unpopular mullahs turn to a non-cleric as president

Iran's Islamic regime has selected a non-cleric in what could mark the last gasp of a fading regime. The mission of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to galvanize popular support for the ruling clerics as they move toward long-range missile and nuclear weapons capability.

Twenty-five years after the Islamic revolution, the regime has run out of clerics deemed credible with the people. As a result, Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei turned to a non-cleric to become the nation's president.

"The election signifies a return to the idealistic principles that have been forgotten over the past few years," the Teheran Times said in an editorial.

Iranian opposition sources who have been monitoring the elections said Ahmadinejad marked a new stage for the regime. Khamenei is seeking to create a unified Iran to face Western pressure to halt the nation's nuclear weapons program. Khamenei expects a U.S.-led drive to undermine the regime over the next year.

"Support for the West, particularly the United States, is extremely high, particularly among university students," an opposition source with daily contact in Iran said. "Many clerics are scared to walk the streets in fear of being attacked."

Enter Ahmadinejad. His job will be to galvanize internal support for the regime by stepping up rhetoric against Israel and the United States and promising better times for the people. Indeed, the president-elect, who will assume office in August, is expected to become an ardent booster of Iran's terrorist policies.

Over the past year, Iran has increased support to just about every Palestinian terrorist group and has become a leading financier of Fatah. Islamic Jihad has received significant increases in funding from Teheran, and Hamas relies on Iran more than ever for terrorist operations.

Iran's confidence is based on its emerging strategic position. Teheran is the leading power in the Middle East. It no longer has a rival in Iraq and has been reconciling with such problematic neighbors as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. U.S. intelligence has assessed that Iran has imported $2 billion worth of weapons from 1996 to 1999 and another $600 million from 2000 to 2003.

The 49-year-old Ahmadinejad, who participated in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran in 1979, is regarded as the most anti-Western of the presidential candidates. His campaign was supported by his former employers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij volunteers.

Most Western diplomats had expected Rafsanjani to become Iran's next president in the election staged by the regime. The diplomats pointed to the first place win by Rafsanjani — who in 2000 failed to win a parliamentary seat — in the first round of elections on June 17.

The diplomats had thought that Ahmadinejad was set up by the Guardian Council, the protectors of the Islamic regime, as a straw man to highlight the liberal qualities of Rafsanjani. They envisioned a run-off election against an archconservative as aiming to bolster Rafsanjani's credentials.

Indeed, the opposite was the case. The regime concluded that Rafsanjani no longer had credibility with ordinary Iranians. The modest Ahmadinejad, who could be seen bicycling in Teheran, was just the prescription.

"In the political atmosphere of the advertisements, little was said about the economic issues," said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president. "We focused our attention on elites and forgot the ordinary people who are trying to get their daily bread."

Ahmadinejad's selection is a gamble for the regime. One of seven children, Ahmadinejad was born in Garmsar, about 100 kilometers south of Teheran, and moved to the capital with his family as a child. He honed his revolutionary credentials at Teheran's University of Science and Industry in the 1970s and then served with the IRGC during the war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988.

Ahmadinejad was one of the university students who took over the U.S. Embassy. The Islamic regime exploited the ardor of these students but never trusted them on the assumption that what they did to the shah could be done to his successors.

In the Basij militia, Ahmadinejad's job was to recruit young Iranians for life-long service to the regime. Basij members attended anti-Western rallies where they shouted, "Death to America" at the top of their lungs. The members also attacked Iranian dissidents, particularly supporters of the outgoing administration of President Mohammed Khatami.

Still, Ahmadinejad was accepted into politics. In the 1990s, he became governor of the northwestern province of Ardebil and was elected mayor of Teheran in 2003.

Over the past year, Ahmadinejad criticized what he termed concessions by the Khatami government to the European Union regarding its demand for a permanent suspension of Teheran's uranium enrichment program. The program has been under the supervision of the IRGC.

"Nuclear energy is a result of Iranian people's scientific development," Ahmadinejad said. "This right of the Iranian people will soon be recognized by those who have so far denied it."

As president, Ahmadinejad will have to focus on one foreign policy task: keep the West, particularly the United States, at bay as Teheran completes the nuclear fuel cycle and develops enough atomic bombs to deter an attack.

Over the past year, opposition sources said, Iran has accelerated cooperation with North Korea to complete its Shihab-3 intermediate-range missile program.

"Iran's peaceful technology is the outcome of the scientific achievements of Iran's youth," Ahmadinejad said in his first news conference as president-elect. "We need the peaceful nuclear technology for energy, medical and agricultural purposes and our scientific progress. We will continue this."

Still, Ahmadinejad is expected to appoint those with the most loyal of credentials — particularly from the IRGC — to his administration. That would mean reshuffling such ministries as energy, interior and intelligence, headed by reformist supporters of Khatami.

Ahmadinejad has charged the Energy Ministry with corruption and favoring foreign contractors over Iranians.

"We are looking at everyone who is now in the government, and any official who changes his tendencies and begins serving the people may stay at his post and continue to work with Ahmadinejad," said Abdul Hassan Faqih, Ahmadinejad's campaign manage

Source: Geostrategy