Daily Standard: The Mullah Wars

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

My new article, "The Mullah Wars," is posted today at the Daily Standard. The article discusses how Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has created massive frictions within the regime that the U.S. should seek to understand and exploit. An excerpt:

Far from being an ordinary politician, Ahmadinejad is an idealist, one whose ideals are rooted in the bloodstained Iranian revolution. Ahmadinejad's total devotion to these revolutionary principles caused Amir Taheri, an astute observer of Iranian politics, to refer to the president as "Iran's perilously honest man."

Part of Ahmadinejad's perilous honesty is exposing the Iranian political establishment's corruption. An initial report from an audit of public finances that the president ordered found over $100 billion of Iran's oil revenue since the revolution not "properly accounted for." Ahmadinejad thinks that the mullahs themselves have been compromised. In this regard, Taheri explains that Ahmadinejad believes "the ruling mullahs have milked the system and, having become rich, can no longer share the revolutionary aspirations of the poor masses."

Far more noticeable to Westerners, though, is Ahmadinejad's honesty about the Iranian regime's ideals. Unlike past president Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad doesn't quote Habermas in his speeches for the benefit of Western audiences. His frank statement that Israel must be "wiped off the map" is far more to the point. This bluntness is yet another weapon that Ahmadinejad uses to bludgeon the mullahs. In his eyes, the tendency of Iranian political elites to give speeches pleasing to Western ears one day then say something different in Farsi after coming home is evidence of their lack of faith. Ahmadinejad believes that the world should hear only the true revolutionary message rather than watered down pronouncements about a "dialogue of civilizations."

Read the whole article here.

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