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| Analysis : Ahmadinejad courts radicals with new Israel outburst
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Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Photo: AFP Copyright 2005
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has knowingly played up to radicals within the regime by risking increased international isolation with his latest anti-Israeli remarks, analysts said Friday.
Ahmadinejad unleashed a storm of controversy with his comments Thursday that Israel should be established on German and Austrian soil and also giving credence to historians who play down the significance of the Holocaust.
The Iranian president appeared unafraid of the inevitable hostile global backlash, after his notorious comment earlier this year that Israel should be "wiped off the map" drew expressions of outrage from around the world.
"The repetition of this kind of speech cannot be accidental or be explained by his political experience," said political analyst Saed Leylaz.
Ahmadinejad's statements are "without doubt an aim of domestic policy since by provoking the world against Iran, a climate is created in which radicalism can breathe easier."
Elected on an platform of restoring the "purity" of the Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad's hardline stance has already worried European countries seeking to strike a deal over Tehran's controversial nuclear programme.
No political experience
Analyst Mashallah Shamsolvaezin said that Ahmadinejad's comments were a gaffe more than anything else, but also acknowledged they would be seized on with glee by radicals.
| Who is the Iranian President? |
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The 49-year-old Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became last August the sixth President of Iran.
Before his election, he was the mayor of Tehran, capital of Iran, since 2002.
He is widely considered to be a religious conservative with Islamist and popular views.
He was a civil engineer and a professor at the Iran university of Science and Technology before his mayorship.
Ahmadinejad is a member of the Central Council of the Islamic Society of engineers but has a more powerful base inside the Alliance of builders of Islamic Iran, also known as 'Abadgaran.'
He is considered one of the main figures in the alliance.
The alliance was divided in supporting him or Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in the first round of the presidential election. While the members of the city council of Tehran supported Ahmadinejad, the parliamentary representatives of Tehran supported Ghalibaf.
| "As Ahmadinejad is a political novice, he has no experienced political advisor and is very stubborn, he has shot himself in the foot," Shamsolvaezin said.
He is also seeking to "profit from the fact that even in Europe there is a debate on the Holocaust, whose magnitude Iranian officials have contested in the past."
Such comments are a boost to radicals who "see a way of sounding the starting gun for a confrontation with Western countries".
Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the Iran's ideological army the Revolutionary Guards, said that if Germany and Austria believed Jews were massacred during World War II, a state of Israel should be established on their soil.
"You believe the Jews were oppressed, why should the Palestinian Muslims have to pay the price?" he asked in an interview with Iranian state television's Arabic-language satellite channel, Al-Alam.
"You oppressed them, so give a part of Europe to the Zionist regime so they can establish any government they want. We would support it," he said.
He also appeared to back historians who have attempted to play down or even deny the Holocaust, saying: "any researcher who denies... with historical proof is harshly pursued, imprisoned and condemned."
Struggle within the regime
Leylaz said that Ahmadinejad is engaged in a struggle with more moderate elements within the regime who would like to see the president tone down his language on Israel and the nuclear issue.
"When you create a climate of isolation this reinforces extremism," he said.
For Shamsolvaezin, Ahmadinejad's remarks also have to be seen in a wider international context, particularly after former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted that he could consider a pre-emptive air strike against Iran's nuclear installations if re-elected.
"We cannot forget the current context between Israel and Iran with a war of words, when Netanyahu talks for example about attacking Iranian nuclear installations."
Shamsolvaezin said that the Islamic world "would accept better this kind of declaration due to the unbalanced US policy."
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