Aiming for Apocalypse
Much rests on whether Iran's leader is a shrewd nationalist or an end-times nut
At the bottom of a well in Jamkaran, Iran, lie tens of thousands of petitions addressed to a much-venerated figure in Shiite Islam called the 12th Imam. One recent addition to that pile would be of interest to the wider world. Written by the current president of Iran and signed by his entire cabinet, it might shed light on the mystical tendencies of a leader who has already succeeded in making an unstable region even more volatile, a man whom some are comparing to Hitler in his unbridled fanaticism.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the 49-year-old former mayor of Tehran who last summer defeated the moderate reformist cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is now widely known as a defiant booster of his nation's nuclear enrichment program. Thought to harbor dreams of an Iranian bomb, he thumbs his nose at the United States and the United Nations, denies the Holocaust, and announces that Israel will one day be "wiped from the map."
Messianic. All that would be troubling enough in itself, of course. But Iran's firebrand president also appears to be driven by a strongly messianic strain of his Shiite Muslim faith. Gauging the intentions of a politician who declares that his "revolution's main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi," is not easy. But if Ahmadinejad appears to fall somewhere on the narrow spectrum between a calculating religious nationalist and an apocalyptic nut, it may be one measure of a precarious time that such distinctions matter.
Clues to this seemingly humorless technocrat lie, not surprisingly, in the branch of the Islamic sect to which he and most Shiites subscribe. Called Twelver Shiism, this tradition holds that there were 12 legitimate successors (imams) to the prophet Muhammad, the last of whom did not die but went into hiding in the 10th century. The 12th Imam, who is also called the Mahdi, shall return in the Last Days to reign over a just world in which Islam is universally embraced. But here arises a point on which Twelvers differ: Will the Mahdi come back only after chaos has erupted and the apocalypse has begun, intervening just in time to save righteous believers from total destruction? Or will his followers have to pave the way for the Mahdi's return by building a just order themselves, thereby enticing him to come out of hiding? Where Ahmadinejad stands on these alternative scenarios may be crucial to understanding his behavior and intentions.
Those who fear an Armageddon-first fanatic clearly have reason for alarm. After delivering a speech at the United Nations last fall, an address full of references to the Mahdi's return, the Islamic republic's newly elected president claimed to have become surrounded by a mysterious "green light" that held all of his listeners in rapt, unblinking thrall. Weird as that was, Ahmadinejad's frequent assertions of national grandeur soar toward the delusional, as when he declared that Iran's "enemies should know that they are unable to even slightly hurt our nation."
Adding to the apocalypse-now interpretation, German political scientist Matthias Kuntzel in a recent New Republic article points to Ahmadinejad's glorification of martyrdom: "Is there an art that is more beautiful, more divine, more eternal than the art of the martyr's death?" the president asked in an early post-election interview. Princeton historian and Middle East specialist Bernard Lewis makes it clear where the president's religiously inspired end-times thinking might lead: "Ahmadinejad and his circle are in an apocalyptic mood," Lewis says. "The use of a nuclear weapon wouldn't bother them in the least."
But are there any grounds for a less dire prognosis? The biographical facts suggest a true-believing child of the Ayatollah Khomeini-led 1979 revolution. Born in Garmsar but raised largely in Tehran, the ironworker's son found himself between undergraduate and graduate studies in engineering at the outbreak of the upheaval. From that time on--as a member of an ultra-Islamist student group involved in the U.S. Embassy takeover, as an intelligence officer in the Revolutionary Guard during and after the war with Iraq, as a provincial governor--he distinguished himself by loyalty to the most conservative champions of Islamic theocracy. His outspoken resistance to liberalizing reform, coupled with his populist leanings and a reputation for honesty and personal austerity, made him a favorite among the hard-liners on the Tehran city council that appointed him mayor in 1983. Iran's current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds the real reins of power in the Islamic republic, was one of Ahmadinejad's strongest boosters in the presidential election, one reason Ahmadinejad could beat a mullah to become the first nonclerical president in the past 24 years.
Armageddon. But being allied with Iran's most conservative mullahs does not necessarily lead to an Armageddon mentality. Ahmadinejad's political theology was first shaped by the teachings of Khomeini, which had little truck with apocalyptic thinking. "Khomeini didn't talk about waiting for the return of the 12th Imam. He said it was our duty to establish the best Islamic government possible," says former Tehran journalist Shaul Bakhash, who now teaches at George Mason University. In more recent years, Ahmadinejad's closest clerical mentor has been Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, dubbed "Professor Crocodile" for his strict positions on governance and social issues and for his support of suicide missions against those he considers Islam's enemies. Yet this hard-line fundamentalist cleric is also one of the founders of the Haqqani theological school in Qum, known for its emphasis on a modern technocratic curriculum as well as religious studies. Although some observers associate Mesbah Yazdi with a religious organization that sought to create chaos to hasten the Mahdi's return, the graduates of his school (some of whom serve in Ahmadinejad's cabinet) are dedicated to creating a just and orderly society, albeit a thoroughly theocratic one. If Mesbah Yazdi has a distinctive position, explains Tehran University political scientist Hadi Semati, it is that the republic's democratic elections are valid only to the extent they discover or confirm "the truth of the Islamic order of justice." The republic, the ayatollah holds, is merely a transitional step toward a pure Islamic state. Ahmadinejad supports that view, although he sometimes differs with his mentor's strict positions on other issues, as when he recently lifted a ban barring women from attending soccer games.
Even those who think Ahmadinejad isn't aiming for Armageddon see a true believer and an arrogantly insular nationalist who has learned that his defiant rhetoric plays well not only among his popular base in Iran but also on the Arab "street." Unlikely to compromise or negotiate, he appears to gain stature the more the West reacts to his taunts and defiance--the best argument, clearly, for the West to ignore him and deal with other Iranian officials.
As of now, the extent of Ahmadinejad's influence within the Iranian state remains unclear. But while the ruling mullahs at first appeared to rein the president in when he sounded most reckless, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in his recent pre-emptive dismissal of forthcoming U.N. resolutions, sounded just as uncompromising as Ahmadinejad. "He may yet overplay his hand," says Bakhash, "but we've had to revise our view of how Iranian government works. He has shown that he can shape things more than we thought." In the end, Ahmadinejad may prove to be no more than a stalking-horse for the hard-line clerics. But that in itself is no great reassurance.
This story appears in the May 22, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.