The Ahmadinejad distraction
IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scolded Columbia University President Lee Bollinger Monday for introducing him with insulting questions and comments. He answered a question about the recent execution of two gay men in Iran by saying, "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country." Then he got annoyed at students who laughed at that response. With the students chortling and booing him scornfully, the former Revolutionary Guard officer resorted to his favorite propaganda line: that his audience was misinformed. "In Iran we do not have this phenomenon," he said. "I don't know who's told you that we have it."
At that moment, the depth of Ahmadinejad's tragic-comic mendacity was evident. Caught in a preposterous fib, he sought to deflect attention by insinuating that unnamed malevolent forces were feeding the audience lies about his country.
Yet the laughter of the Columbia students was nothing compared with the reception he received last December from Iranian students at Amir Kabir University in Tehran. There, the students called him a "fascist president," shouting "death to the dictator" and booing him so energetically that he fled the campus.
This is the reality in Iran, and it went unrecognized in the hysterical overreactions to Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia. At home, he is despised not only by students, reformers, and intellectuals, but also by the impoverished masses to whom he originally promised a share in Iran's oil profits. They suffer from inflation, a sharp increase in the subsidized price of gas, and high unemployment - while relatives and cronies of the ruling mullahs hide their millions in Dubai.
Regardless of his high profile, Ahmadinejad is not the decider in Iran. Despite his efforts to place like-minded hard-liners from the Revolutionary Guards in key positions, his authority is firmly circumscribed. He does not make the decisions about Iran's nuclear program or other important matters in foreign policy. And there have been recent signs that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and clerical factions in the next circle of power, are intent on clipping Ahmadinejad's wings. In Iran's most recent manipulated elections - for local councils and for the clerical body that will choose the next Supreme Leader - Ahmadinejad's candidates were trounced.
Ahmadinejad, who does more harm to Iranians than to Americans or Iran's neighbors, should not be a distraction from the crucial question of what to do about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons capability and its growing regional influence. The reality is that the United States and Iran share common allies in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as common enemies. If his predecessors were able to make beneficial deals with the Soviet Union and Maoist China, President Bush should be able to do the same with the Islamic Republic of Iran. 