It is quite possible that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first learnt about
sabre-rattling at his father’s blacksmith’s shop in Tehran. The Persian
sabre, or shamshir, has a sharply curved narrow blade that requires an exact
fit inside its scabbard, and to an apprentice’s ear any undue clank or
jangle would suggest a botched job.
Many people now wish that Iran’s president had stuck to his father’s
profession, or at least pursued his PhD in traffic management. Instead, the
combative leader is giving everyone the heebie-jeebies as he fires off
volleys of missiles in a game of brinkmanship that could, it is feared, lead
to war between America and Iran.
Once again the world’s gaze is fixed in alarm on Ahmadinejad, a tiny, wiry
figure with a gaunt face and eyes that do not change expression as he spouts
combustive rhetoric. This devotee of football and technology, devout husband
of a university lecturer and father of three children, has spoken of being
bathed in a green light from heaven. He says that he yearns for a Shi’ite
saviour, the 12th imam, to return and bring about the final apocalypse.
One school of thought holds that Iran’s second launch of powerful Shahab-3
rockets across the Gulf in the space of a week was Ahmadinejad throwing the
toys out of his pram in fury at America’s studied indifference to his
provocations. Since coming to power in 2005, the 51-year-old president has
gone out of his way to outrage the West, declaring that Israel should be
wiped from the map, that the Holocaust is a myth and that Iran has an
inalienable right to nuclear power – potential cover for nuclear weapons.
Lately he has called for US military bases across the world to be “eradicated”
and promised to strike at Tel Aviv if Iran were attacked. He has also
threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for 40% of the world’s
oil supplies, in retaliation.
According to this theory, the show of force was Ahmadinejad’s attempt to
divert attention from his failures on the domestic front. If so, it did not
go to plan. The official photographs showing the launch of four Iranian
missiles on Wednesday were faked. One commentator joked that sophisticated
western technology had fallen into Iran’s hands – “Good news: it’s
Photoshop.”
However, some Tehran watchers doubt that Ahmadinejad’s finger was anywhere
near the firing button or that he was staging a distraction. As president,
they point out, he has no authority over the armed forces.
“There’s a much simpler explanation,” said Richard Dalton, a fellow of the
Royal Institute of International Affairs. “When you get threatened
explicitly and repeatedly, you want to show you have the capability of
hitting back.” In his opinion, the rocket display was a predictable reaction
to Israel’s aerial manoeuvres in the Mediterranean a month ago, which
resembled a trial run for a bombing raid on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Karim Sadjapour, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, a Washington think
tank, believes that the exercise was ordered not by Iran’s firebrand
president but by Ayatollah Khamenei, the country’s supposedly more moderate
“supreme leader”.
However, few experts dispute that Ahmadinejad’s policies have left Iran’s
economy in disarray. With inflation running at an estimated 14% and
one-third of the population unemployed, his goal of “putting the petroleum
income on people’s tables” is as distant as ever. At one point in 2006,
vegetable prices tripled and housing prices doubled within a matter of
months, prompting calls for him to focus on the economy rather than on
disputes with the West.
After a purge of academics, students disrupted his speech at a Tehran
polytechnic, setting fire to photographs of him and throwing firecrackers. A
student website accused him of corruption, mismanagement and discrimination.
Middle-class women resent his strict dress code. Human Rights Watch has
reported “routine torture” under his regime.
His pugnacious foreign relations, which have resulted in oil production
running far below its potential, are seen as a dangerous folly by many
middle-class Iranians. Last year a Tehran website poll of 20,000 people
found that 62.5% of those who voted for him in 2005 would not do so in next
year’s presidential election. But the result is difficult to predict, as
Ahmadinejad has assiduously courted his natural constituency in rural areas,
pushing through small business loans and stalled projects.
The recurrent question is why Khamenei does not rein him in, beyond
criticising his “personalisation” of the nuclear issue. One answer is that
whatever the supreme leader’s reservations, he does not dictate the
government’s day-to-day policies. However, Ahmadinejad’s powers are more
circumscribed than most prime ministers, requiring him to defer to his
colleagues. “Ahmedinejad’s influence on the nuclear file has waned,” said
Sadjapour.
Ahmadinejad was born in the shadow of the Alborz mountains on October 28,
1956, the fourth of seven children. He was one year old when his father,
Ahmad, decided to improve the family’s lot by moving to Tehran to work as a
blacksmith. In his official blog, the president recalls that his father was
“a hard-bitten toiler blacksmith, a pious man who regularly participated in
religious programmes”.
The boy showed an early interest in reading the Koran. “He liked to go to
classes but they threw him out because he was too young,” said his cousin,
Maasoumeh Saborjhian. “But he would insist, saying, ‘No, no, I know how to
read the Koran’.”
At high school he rankled at “the crapulence of [the Shah of Iran’s] debauched
clan and their foreign companies”. An intelligent youth (“I was a
distinguished student”), he ranked 130th in the nationwide university
entrance exams in 1975 (“although I had nose bleeding during the test”) and
was admitted to the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) to
study civil engineering. He was a committed political activist, printing
leaflets at home denouncing the “traitorous” shah. At one point his
activities forced the family into hiding to avoid arrest by the Savak, the
shah’s secret police.
In 1979, the year of the shah’s overthrow, he was the university’s head
representative to the student gatherings that occasionally met his “valiant”
hero Ayatollah Khomeini, the country’s new ruler, and he became a founder
member of the Office for Strengthening Unity, the student organisation
linked to the seizure of the US embassy. On receiving his doctorate in
traffic management and engineering in 1987, he became a civil engineer and a
professor at IUST. However, he had also joined the Revolutionary Guards and
saw action during the Iran-Iraq war. Then his remarkable ascent began. After
the war, he served as vice-governor and governor of the provinces of Maku
and Khoy and then governor of Ardabil from 1993 to 1997.
Questions have emerged about Ahmadinejad’s murky past. Former hostages taken
captive at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held for 444 days have
claimed that he was one of the ringleaders. Don Sharer, a retired navy
captain, remembered him as “a cruel individual”. There are also claims that
Ahmadinejad played a part in the assassinations of political opponents,
notably Abdul Rahman Ghasse-mou, the exiled Kurdish leader, and two of his
associates in Vienna in 1989.
Ahmadinejad was almost unknown when he was elected mayor of Tehran in 2003 on
a 12% turnout. He reversed many reforms and put more emphasis on religion
while courting popularity by distributing soup to the poor.
During the presidential campaign in 2005, he contrasted his spartan imag with
the lavish lifestyle of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the now 74-year-old
former president. He had few campaign funds, but his focus on ordinary
people and the fact that he was not a mullah made him seem like a breath of
fresh air.
Why does he love goading the West? “He’s an engineer and sees things in black
and white,” said one analyst. “It’s partly his rough manner, but it’s also a
philosophy that Iran, with its history, religion and resources, should turn
its back on the outside world.”
Last month Ahmadinejad seemed to relish the prospect that if Iran’s enemies
“close all the doors in front of Iran” the nation would be free to develop
by itself. At this rate, that day may arrive sooner than he thinks.
