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14 Oct 2008 08:34 am

Ahmadinejad The Insignificant?

Akbar Ganji has a long insightful article on Iranian elections. A teaser:

Despite all the attention he receives, Ahmadinejad does not even rank among Iran's top 100 leaders over the past 30 years.

Khamenei supports Ahmadinejad immeasurably more than he did any of Ahmadinejad's predecessors, but Ahmadinejad is only as powerful as he is devoted to Khamenei and successful at advancing his aims. Khamenei's power is so great, in fact, that in 2004 the reformist Muhammad Khatami declared that the post of president, which he held at the time, had been reduced to a factotum. Blaming the country's main problems on Ahmadinejad not only overstates his influence; it inaccurately suggests that Iran's problems will go away when he does. More likely, especially regarding matters such as Iran's foreign policy, the situation will remain much the same as long as the structure of power that supports the supreme leader remains unchanged.

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