Inside the real Iran

Iran's turbulent President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was compared to Saddam Hussein yesterday by a senior Israeli figure as the rhetoric and recriminations over the Iranian nuclear programme surged ever higher.

On Friday Mr Ahmadinejad said Israel was a "rotten, dried tree" that would be annihilated by "one storm", increasing fears over what Iran might do with the nuclear weapons it is presumed to be seeking. Shimon Peres, the veteran Israeli statesman, retorted that he sounded like Iraq's fallen despot, adding: "Ahmadinejad will end up like Saddam Hussein."

This followed moments of sheer surrealism earlier in the week, when the President told a rapturous crowd in the eastern city of Mashhad that Iranian scientists had successfully enriched uranium, despite the bullying of Western powers. "Iran is now a nuclear power," he said. Moments later, against the same doves-of-peace backdrop, students danced with enormous plastic vials representing enriched uranium.

The national pride that greeted Mr Ahmadinejad's announcement was heartfelt, and showed how far many Iranians mistrust foreign powers. "We have to resist and achieve things like this that are our legal right," said Kambiz Bayat, a former civil servant. "Fortunately, we are used to hardship. In the [Iran-Iraq] war we went through periods without anything. I have brought up my children to learn they must be ready for such difficulties."

So is Iran a nation of zealots, united behind its messianic President? Is George Bush justified in contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons to eradicate the threat from Tehran, as the veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh charged last week?

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article358002.ece