DAR AL ISLAM - IRAN: AHMADINEJAD = A USEFUL DISTRACTION

A Useful Distraction
Why the Iranian mullahs will never silence Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
By Ian Bremmer

Despite a show of unity within the Iranian leadership over the handling of the British sailors and marines, Bush administration officials still hope that economic and diplomatic pressure can persuade the country's more pragmatic conservatives to sideline firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and compromise away the country's nuclear ambitions. They shouldn't get their hopes up. It is domestic anxiety over the economy and the rising public anger it provokes that encourages the Iranian government to continually reassert its determination to go nuclear.

Ahmadinejad's election in 2005 didn't create Iran's economic problems or the broad domestic consensus in favor of nuclear development. Both have been growing for many years, but the president's belligerent stance on Iran's right to enrich uranium has helped divert some public attention from the economic woes. Ahmadinejad also absorbs the bulk of public criticism of economic mismanagement, sparing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others within the clerical elite their share of blame.

That's why, whatever their reservations about his rhetorical excesses and his inability to reduce inflation and unemployment, the mullahs still consider Ahmadinejad too useful to silence.

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