Stoking The Fire
Iran's president raises alarm as he plays to the hard-liners
Some leaders approach controversy much as they might dip their toes into hot water. Others jump in with both feet. Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, clearly is one of the latter. In a speech last week, he dismissed the Holocaust as "a myth." Earlier--at a summit intended to show Islamic moderation and tolerance, of all places--he called for moving Israel to Europe to free up Palestinian lands. Before that, he thundered that Israel should be "wiped off the map."
A former Revolutionary Guard who unexpectedly won the presidential race in June, Ahmadinejad's unabashed Holocaust denial doubtless appeals to his hard-line base. That his remarks would touch off an international uproar must have been known. Unclear, though, is whether he anticipated how his words might affect negotiations with France, Britain, and Germany on ending Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons programs. European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso said the Iranian's words draw "our attention to the real danger of that regime having an atomic bomb."
True believer. A former mayor of Tehran backed by conservative clerics, Ahmadinejad, 49, speaks "from personal conviction," says Shaul Bakhash, an Iran watcher at George Mason University. Although anti-Israel vitriol has been Iranian boilerplate since the revolution, the rhetoric was toned down over the past decade. In denying the Holocaust, however, Ahmadinejad, who is not the supreme leader of Iran's complicated theocratic system, has gone beyond even the declarations of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Some Iranians bemoan the new remarks as weakening Tehran in the nuclear talks--and for good reason. Bush administration officials are convinced that Ahmadinejad is reinforcing international resolve to deny Iran an atomic bomb. The U.S. approach on Iran, says a senior administration source, aims "to make life difficult for the rulers." But with Ahmadinejad at the microphone, Iran's leaders are making life difficult for themselves.
This story appears in the December 26, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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