US President Barack Obama has given Tehran the choice: The mullah regime can either give up its nuclear program and get rewarded for doing so, or it will face intensified sanctions. But Iran has made significant progress with its nuclear facilities and is unprepared to agree to a moratorium.
It's going to be his day of festival, the "Day of the Atom." To celebrate the event, Iran's president will travel on Wednesday to Isfahan, the pride of the nation and jewel of ancient Persia, one of the most impressive centers of culture in the Islamic world. It was in Isfahan that his predecessors, the Safawiden rulers, resided and established a great civilization at the end of the 16th century.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is arriving in Isfahan from the capital Tehran on his presidential aircraft, an aging Boeing 707, and the only foreign journalists on board are reporters from SPIEGEL -- a first. The provincial capital's powerful and important people are standing at attention on the tarmac: mullahs, military officials and bureaucrats.
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Ahmadinejad, 52, slowly sinks to his knees in front of a four-year-old girl, whose black chador covers everything but her face. Reciting a verse from the Koran, he accepts a bouquet of flowers from the little girl. Then he gets into a black Japanese SUV, its top open so that he can wave to the crowds as he is driven into the city. Indeed, the crowds are so enthusiastic that the convoy is forced to come to a complete stop for minutes at a time at some intersections.
Ten thousand Isfahanis have gathered on the city's most magnificent square, which is named after the central historic figure of the Islamic Republic of Iran, revolutionary leader Imam Ruhollah Khomeini. The right half of the square is a black sea with a few dabs of color, as fully veiled women hold up pictures of the president. On the other side, men with three-day beards, their arms outstretched, fists to the sky, greet their leader with chants of: "Ahmadinejad, Independence, Justice!" Many are wearing green revolutionary drill outfits.
The enormous signs covered with slogans, hanging from the side of a building, have been the standard in this theocracy since the revolution 30 years ago: "Down with USA" and "Down with Israel."
FROM THE MAGAZINE Find out how you can reprint this DER SPIEGEL article in your publication. Ahmadinejad refrains from using aggressive language in his speech, which lasts an hour and a half. He mentions new US President Barack Obama's offer to negotiate, but he focuses on the country's economic troubles and, of course, he speaks highly of Iran's prospects for the future -- thanks to nuclear technology, the "gem of our scientific community." The applause at the end is muted, as the president quickly disappears for midday prayers.
The next day, Ahmadinejad's program includes a visit to Isfahan's nuclear facilities on the outskirts of the city, where scientists are working on uranium enrichment. This is one of the mysterious factories the world fears, because it believes that the Iranians are building a nuclear bomb there.
Who is this Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this man the entire West sees as a potential threat to peace, as a Dr. Strangelove who seems to love the bomb a little too much? This man who has relished his role as a pariah on the stage of world politics during his four years in office, portraying himself as a persecuted man who has been denied the respect he deserves.
This contradiction between underdog and world leader is the leitmotif of his presidency. And what now? With the new US president dreaming of a world without nuclear weapons, is Ahmadinejad losing his bogeyman?
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS SPIEGEL Interview with Iranian President Ahmadinejad: 'We Are Neither Obstinate nor Gullible' (04/10/2009) SPIEGEL 360: Our Full Coverage of the Iran Conflict Security is very tight at the president's official seat on Pasteur Street in the Iranian capital Tehran, a relatively plain-looking complex of buildings in the center of this city of 12 million people. But in the anteroom of power, a scene of hero worship depicted on a very large picture is unsettling to the visitors from the West. It portrays smiling children running to their deaths. They are Khomeini's advance guard of miniature martyrs, children who were unscrupulously sacrificed in the war against Saddam Hussein.
This is the Iranian theocracy that sends shivers down the world's collective spine. For many, Iran is a nightmarish country, a combination of high-tech weapons and a religious ideology based on 1,400-year-old martyr legends that focuses on suffering. It is an isolated and unpredictable country, a wounded civilization whose leaders are taking their revenge on the West by striving to develop nuclear weapons and financing radical Islamists from Hamas to Hezbollah.
The Iranian president is currently under more pressure than usual. He is being asked to venture into new territory and respond to America's offer to relax tensions. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, threatened Tehran with "regime change" of the sort he announced and implemented in neighboring Iraq. Bush refused to so much as negotiate over the Iranian nuclear program and, with the arrogance of a superpower, helped unify the Iranian public against the "USA, the Great Satan." It was Bush who ensured that the relatively unpopular regime of mullahs, despite its mishandling of the economy, could stabilize itself.
Since the election of the new American president, who promised a change in foreign policy, it is no longer as easy for Ahmadinejad to demonize the United States, especially now that Obama has lived up to his promise of a new beginning -- with a practically revolutionary gesture.
On March 20, the US president gave a remarkable speech that was distributed, in the form of a video address with Persian subtitles, to television stations in the Middle East. On the evening leading up to their new year, Obama addressed the Iranian population directly, calling them "a great civilization" whose "accomplishments have earned the respect of the United States and the world." He stressed that he is seeking constructive cooperation with Iran and promised negotiations.
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But the new man in the White House also mentioned the commitments he expects from Tehran in return. Iran, he said, cannot "take its rightful place in the community of nations" through "terror or arms," but through "peaceful actions." "The measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy," he said, "it is your demonstrated ability to build and create."
The initial reaction from the Iranian leadership was muted. In a televised address, the powerful religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 69, said he was disappointed that Obama had not at least released Iran's frozen assets in the United States.
As hysterical as the Iranian leadership's anti-Americanism seems to be at times, it has valid historical reasons. In 1953, Washington's intelligence service brought down democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and then massively supported the Shah dictatorship for a quarter century. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was only able to launch his war against Iran with the help of American weapons and logistical guidance from Washington. The war lasted eight bloody years and ended in stalemate.
Hostility to the United States has become one of the key pillars of the theocracy. Will it collapse under Obama's friendliness and potentially substantial American good will? Can an American "grand bargain," a mixture of comprehensive political and economic concessions, stop the Iranians from building the nuclear weapons many believe they are seeking to develop? The United States, at any rate, will participate in all nuclear talks in the future, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Wednesday. The previous members of the negotiating group promptly invited Iran to enter a new round.
NEWSLETTER Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In- Box everyday. The US president is also under pressure to achieve progress on the nuclear issue. Time is running out for Obama, because the Iranians, according to a report released in February by the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, may already have reached "breakout capability." This means that with their centrifuges and more than 1,000 kilograms of low enriched uranium hexafluoride, the Iranians could soon be able to flip the switch in the direction of having their own bomb.
Iran continued its development activities in the shadow of years of negotiations with Europeans over freezing the nuclear program. Undeterred even in the face of sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council, Tehran installed and placed into service about 6,000 centrifuges needed for uranium enrichment in its nuclear facilities.
Now the existing, low enriched uranium hexafluoride can be refined to make weapons-grade uranium, either in the country's known enrichment facilities or, as many experts assume, in a location that remains unknown. If one thing is clear, it is that once it becomes known that Iran has embarked on this next enrichment step -- which, until now, has apparently been held up by a political decision -- a military strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities will be all but unavoidable. Experts believe that once this decision is reached, it could take less than six months for the Iranians to build their first bomb.
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