M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmedinejad has this in common with U.S. President George W. Bush and former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair: he too speaks directly to God. Admirers
consider him to be the pilot heralding the imminent return of the Mahdi, the
expected Muslim Messiah.
Less undiscerning observers consider the
president of the Islamic Republic of Iran to be a buffoon, without any
substantive authority inside his own country -- where the key members of the
government report directly to Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Khamenei -- and
with a diminishing support base within his own people, caused by the extreme
economic mismanagement of the mullahs.
A country that ought to have enjoyed a
prosperous standard of living for its 78 million people has huge pools of
extreme poverty, caused by a dysfunctional system reminiscent of India during
the three decades from 1955-85 of comprehensive central planning. What passes
for private industry in Iran is a collection of enterprises run like feudal
fiefs by those close to the supreme leader, or regarded by him as potential
troublemakers needing to be pampered out of opposition.
Ahmedinejad himself came to power
Iran-style, where the counted ballots threw up -- not entirely coincidentally
-- the very result favored by Khamenei, who saw the current Iranian president
as a poodle who would not stray from total obedience the way Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani did during his term. Unfortunately for the wily supreme leader,
Ahmedinejad began to get delusions of divine greatness within a year, even
while proving inept in supervising the system in a manner that would give the
people of Iran enough crumbs to remain quiescent.
