Why Ahmadinejad Acts the Way He Does

Khamenei has really had no spiritual brothers since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's right-hand man, Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, gave him the mantle of leadership in 1989. Rafsanjani picked Khamenei to succeed 'the Imam' because he was a charisma-free, mediocre cleric who could not possibly challenge the influence of Khomeini’s more-trusted lieutenants. Few men who have not been created by Khamenei admire the current ruler of Iran. But Ahmadinejad does (at least more than most). He mirrors Khamenei's inner self, his revolutionary essence: the Islamic utopianism married to Iranian nationalism married to Third World socialism. Inelegantly but sincerely, Ahmadinejad managed to get all of these themes into his Tuesday speech. Through Ahmadinejad, Khamenei can see a rebirth of the Islamic revolution. He is a lower-class affirmation of the revolution’s core virtue—anti-Westernization and its three intertwined subsets: anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism—at a time when much of Iran's upper and middle classes have abandoned Khamenehi’s Islamic way of life for the Green Movement.