Iranian President's Got Game. But Which Game?

TEHRAN, Iran — In his soccer-playing youth, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was renowned for two valuable skills: speed, and his ability to fake out an opponent with fancy footwork. Of course, he mostly played indoor, or salon soccer, on a smaller-than-normal field.

Today, the fleet-footed footballer-turned-president of Iran is using the same tools in his war of wills with the United States. There are many within Iran, however, who suspect that “the monkey,” as the bearded president is known among detractors, is playing a game whose rules he does not understand, on a playing field too vast for his skill set.

“He can’t comprehend the situation he’s facing, and he can’t even understand the consequences he’s talked himself into,” said Ebrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister who now heads the Freedom Movement of Iran, a leading opposition group.

Speaking at his home, where songbirds lighten the mood outside, Yazdi, who served as foreign minister in the first days after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979, suggested that Ahmadinejad might not be able to serve out his full four-year term, which ends in 2009.

ARTICLE: Ahmadinejad came to power last year bringing his own brand of reckless talk about Israel and Iran’s right to acquire nuclear technology. It is widely believed that in so doing, the president was ignoring the advice of his own government and even some of the ayatollahs who hold supreme power. If so, Ahmadinejad was demonstrating the same crowd-pleasing theatrics that made him a popular mayor of Tehran until he became president. While educated, wealthier citizens of the sprawling capital dismiss him as a buffoon, the president has rallied support among the poor, disenfranchised millions in other parts of the country… Ahmadinejad is fond of descending on a provincial town with little notice, assembling a crowd, and asking if their municipal services are working satisfactorily. When he hears the inevitable shouts of “No!” he has the local official in charge hauled before him for a tongue-lashing. It is a tactic borrowed from Reza Shah, the father of the monarch who was deposed by the revolution in 1978.

HISTORY: Hitler achieved in a brief period a complete solution to all the most intractable parliamentary problems of Weimar Germany, and his concept of fulfilling the needs of others whilst entering into power succeeded in such a manner as to carry enormous propaganda value to the German people. The people had been suffering the torments of un-resolvable parliamentary conflicts through so many short-lived administrations that Hitler's masterstroke was overwhelming. In the November 1933 one-party Elections, Nazism gained 92.2% of the Electorate. A euphoria swept Germany in the intervening months as the long-awaited nationalist and economic savior of the Reich fulfilled all his promises towards economic recovery. Preceding administrations had psychologically paved the way for dictatorship by having repeatedly acted without the consent or cooperation of the Reichstag. Dependent on flimsy alliances and existing under Decree Rule 48 for Presidential appointments, the Reichstag had one power alone, which was to precede a further and generally dreaded election with a vote of no confidence. The very concepts of democracy were subject to widespread disdain as a result of this inability to achieve lasting balance of administration.

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