Ahmadinejad be damned

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"It's all over the Iranian press: President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, self-described "street cleaner of the people", is in deep political trouble at home, subjected to crossfire from conservatives and reformers alike. All the more ironic considering the biblical tsunami of Washington spin portraying Ahmadinejad as the newest "new Hitler" (Saddam Hussein, after all, fell victim to a lynch mob)......

Well, he was consolidating what the White House already regards as the new "axis of evil" - the strategic relationship between Iran and Venezuela, sealed last September during Ahmadinejad's first visit to Caracas, right inside what the US historically considered its "back yard".....

In the lightning-quick Latin America tour that took him to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador, meeting re-elected leftist stalwart Hugo Chavez, the recently elected former guerrillero Daniel Ortega, and US-educated economist Rafael Correa, the key Ahmadinejad stop was in Caracas. A joint Iran-Venezuela US$2 billion fund for myriad projects will also benefit other friendly developing countries in Latin America and Africa that, in Chavez' words, "are making efforts to liberate themselves from the imperialist yoke"......

To boost Washington's ire to stratospheric levels, Chavez once again stressed that the Bolivarian and the Islamic revolutions were "sisters" - a link impeccably translated by the official exchange of gifts: Ahmadinejad received a Persian translation of a book on Simon Bolivar, the great South American liberator, while Chavez received a Spanish translation of a book on ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 revolution......

Khamenei and his supporters - the clerics' faction - believe that Ahmadinejad's explosive tirades have been used as firepower by the US to persuade the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran. In addition, Ahmadinejad's faction - via his mentor Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi - lost ground in last month's election to the Council of Experts, the only body that can hold the Supreme Leader to account. Victory went to perennial Machiavellian Hashemi Rafsanjani - who leads a moderate, semi-secular faction hostile to Ahmadinejad's......

Keeping Ahmadinejad on a leash will be a crucial part of the nationalist theocracy's strategy of doing everything in its power not to incur further US wrath - as the Bush administration escalates its formidable array of acts of provocation. Ahmadinejad is now seen as too much of a loose cannon to be left to his own devices - especially when 45 centuries of accumulated Persian diplomacy can be effectively deployed.

Iran enjoys good political relations with the majority of countries around the world - especially in the South. The glaring exceptions are the US and Israel. Iran is not a backward, repressive regime like Saudi Arabia. The talk in Tehran is that the Supreme Leader and professional diplomats have concluded that the best course of action for Iran is to ride the tempest of provocations - sanctions, illegal raids on consulates, US intelligence infiltrating sensitive Khuzestan province, encirclement by nuclear-equipped aircraft carriers, propaganda over Iranian "networks" killing Americans in Iraq - while advancing Iran's interests in Lebanon, Central Asia, China, Russia and South America.

Washington might need to start manufacturing another "new Hitler".