Devoted and Defiant

Feb. 13, 2006 issue - Born to a blacksmith, educated as a revolutionary, trained as a killer and derided by rivals as a mystical fanatic, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is easily cast as the personification of everything there is to fear about a nuclear Iran. But he may be worse than that—not because of how he looks to the outside world, but because of what he represents inside his country. Ahmadinejad plays to a nostalgia for war among parts of Iran's leadership, and even some of its young people: a longing for confrontation, a belief that a quarter century ago, when revolutionary Iran was ready to challenge the world, send countless youths to martyrdom in the fight against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, endure missile attacks on its cities, suffer poison-gas attacks against its troops—in those days the regime of the ayatollahs was purer, more noble, more popular and ultimately more secure.

Since he took office in August, Ahmadinejad has shown himself an expert at provoking outrage, calling for the destruction of Israel, denying the Holocaust, berating "false superpowers." Although he continues to swear that Iran's nuclear research is peaceful, much of the world's lack of faith in Iran's promises was clear last week when even Russia and China agreed to send its case before the Security Council. Iran's response: threats to cease voluntary cooperation with nuclear investigators from the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.

How dangerous is the crisis that Ahmadinejad has helped to spawn? Unimpeded by inspections and vowing to launch commercial uranium enrichment, Iran could move ahead quickly with a program to build a bomb—if that is indeed what it wants to do. Iran can produce enriched uranium "by the ton," its ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, told NEWSWEEK shortly after Saturday's vote, even as he insisted Iran will not produce a bomb.

U.S. intelligence sources estimate that a workable Iranian weapon is four to 10 years away. Israeli intelligence suggests a year may be a closer bet, and the Israelis see Iranian nukes as an existential threat to be stopped at all costs. Not since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was alive in the 1980s has Iran provoked so many regional and global tensions—and that's just what Ahmadinejad, his religious superiors and his key supporters in the Street seem to want. "This is the war generation," says Massoud Denhmaki, a documentary filmmaker and former member of the religious militia Ansar-e Hizbullah. "During the war [against Saddam Hussein's Iraq from 1980-1988], we learned how to walk on mines so others could walk on our backs. This is the same approach this generation has toward politics. We accomplished a lot with very little during the war. We'll manage the country the same way."

Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy calls these veterans "a very dangerous group." Sophisticated Iranians have treated them as "hicks," he says. But the survivors of the savage battles of 20 years ago "feel that they have a moral right to govern that country because they are the ones that saved it." After years of corruption and failed reforms, they mix a yearning for change with nostalgia for prouder times.

Even many young people are caught up in this wave. On the campus of Tehran's elite Imam Sadegh University, students who weren't born in 1979 talk about "the purity of the revolution and the war." "An Islamic renaissance is starting from here," says Reza Tawana, a third-year law student who fingers his worry beads and avoids looking women in the eye. "We are witnessing the start of a fundamentalist uprising in the region from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to Hamas, Hizbullah in Lebanon and of course Mr. Ahmadinejad in our own country."

For the Bush administration, which is trying publicly to drive a wedge between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people, such attitudes present a dangerous challenge. This isn't just about nukes. Iran under pressure can use its extensive contacts in Iraq among dissidents and insurgents—and within the Shiite-dominated government—to further undermine the American position there. In today's tight market for oil, any threat to Iran's exports of crude will likely send prices toward $100 a barrel. Last week, even as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice waged a diplomatic battle to get the regime dragged before the Security Council, President George W. Bush tried reaching out to the Iranian masses "held hostage" by a small clerical elite. "We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom," said Bush. "And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran."

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