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Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won asell ugg boots surprise election victory in 2005, has descended into infamy in the United States as a dangerous demagogue and an anti-Semite. Ahmadinejad must be taken seriously, however, and not just for his threats, verbal outbursts, and political provocations. Wherever he speaks and whomever he addresses, Ahmadinejad is always communicating with a domestic audience of millions of citizens in Iran, as well as with the rest of the Muslim world. He knows his audience well and, while he may convey an air of clumsy haphazardness, his discourse and demeanor express a meticulously crafted, politically astute message of pious populism. He is very much a product of recent Iranian history, and understanding his early years and rise to power provides insight into current circumstances in Iran, his own likely course of action, and the prospects for Iranian political reform. Born on October 28, 1956, Ahmadinejad was the fourth child ofugg lace-ups boots a poor family who lived in a small village not far from Tehran, Iran’s capital. A few years later, his father moved the family to Tehran, part of a massive migration of Iranian villagers to cities that began in the late 1950s, stimulated by policies undertaken by the Shah in response to American pressures. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, then Shah of Iran, had first come tonightfall ugg boots power in 1941, and was restored to his throne with American and British help in a 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. After the coup the Shah was widely understood as, in the words of a U.S. ambassador, “a ward of the U.S.” In the late 1950s American advice mattered. With the Cold War raging and concern about oil supplies on the rise, the Eisenhower administration worried that the Shah’s repressive regime would incite a social revolution. The resulting pressure to liberalize, which mounted during the Kennedy years, compelled the Shah to introduce a series of socioeconomic reforms collectively known as the White Revolution (“white” for its supposed nonviolent nature). The reforms granted women the right to vote and participate inugg boots on sale the political process, secularized education and increased access to schools, and tried (unsuccessfully) to enable Iran’s religious minorities—principally Baha’is, Jews, and Christians—to take the oath of office on a holy book of their own choosing. The centerpiece of the “revolution,” though, was land reform. With that, along with other elements of the White Revolution, the Shah, U.S. analysts thought, would trade support from the traditional but corrupt landed gentry for that of a newly enfranchised peasantry and a bourgeoning middle class of technocrats, teachers, and shopkeepers. The Kennedy administration hoped land reform would first bring about dramatic social change and then—as predicted by contemporary theories of modernization—political transformation and a more liberal polity. But Iran’s land reform program was troubled from the start. Although a sizeable number ofshort metallic ugg boots peasants received land, each plot was usually too small to sustain an entire family. Moreover, rising oil revenues were turning Tehran and other big cities into virtual El Dorados. Instead of producing an enfranchised peasantry and an urban middle class, land reform led millions of villagers to migrate to the cities in search of better lives, expediting the movement of people like the Ahmadinejads to Tehran. Politically, things were no better. The secular opposition—left and center—never accepted the reforms as genuine. Embittered by the 1953 coup against a powerfully nationalist prime minister, they did not regard the Shah’s regime as legitimate; it was, they said, a puppet of the United States, incapable of bringing about genuine change. The Shah himself, convinced that economic growth would guarantee his own survival, was unwilling to share political power with the new middle class, and certainly not with the poor masses converging on the cities. Nor, even more importantly, did the Shah’s regime make any effort to socially integrate families like the Ahmadinejads, who had flocked to the cities but were uncomfortable with the cosmopolitan ethos they found there. Moreover, from the beginning the conservative clergy viewed the White Revolution as an affront to Islam and a dangerous move toward Western modernity: Ayatollah Khomeini immediately denounced the proposed reforms, led the clerical opposition, and spent eight months under house arrest for his speeches against the Shah, the reforms, and anugg mini boots impending bill granting U.S. citizens immunity from prosecution in Iranian courts. His arrest, in 1963, provoked powerful urban protest, the so-called uprising of 15 Khordad 1342, which led to a large number of deaths—thousands according to the opposition, 400 according to more reliable sources. The pressure on Iran to liberalize, which had continuedsundance ii ugg boots through much of the 1960s, ended with the Nixon administration. The Nixon doctrine rejected the idea that the United States should police the world and pushed instead for strengthening local military powers, with Iran serving as the new hegemonic force in the Persian Gulf. Given carte blanche to buy new weapons systems, the Shah—faced with growing political pressure from below—grew increasingly authoritarian. Ignoring the letter and spirit of the Constitution, he banned all the existing parties and crafted a one-party system. Calling the party Rastakhiz (meaning “resurgence” or “rebirth”), he decreed that every Iranian must join it and eventually ordered party officials to develop an ideology for the country “based on the laws of dialectics.” Like millions drawn to the city during those years, the Ahmadinejad family settled in one ofugg nightfall boots Tehran’s poorest neighborhoods and brought with them the cultural conservatism and traditional Islam of Iran’s peasantry. Struggling to make a living through odd jobs, the elder Ahmadinejad continued to cultivate in his son an unbending devotion to Islam. Even by the standards of other villagers, the family was unusually devout. As a boy, Ahmadinejad regularly accompanied his father to the mosque and insisted on performing all religious duties and rituals, even before the requisite age. While his parents were regular participants in neighborhood religious organizations, Ahmadinejad himself was keen on learning and reciting the Qur’an. Ahmadinejad became a hard-working, disciplined high school student, often tall metallic ugg bootsfinishing at the top of his class. In 1976 he took Iran’s national university entrance exams, and claims his score ranked 132nd among more than 400,000 examinees that year (though the school he chose to attend—the College of Science and Technology—was in the second-tier of such institutions, which is hard to reconcile with his claim). Those years saw a sharp rise in the number of new mosques throughout Iran, and prayer rooms in high schools and colleges. Concerned about the growing strength of his political opponents on the left, the Shah saw the piety of young men like Ahmadinejad as an antidote to communism. He failed to recognize the ambitions of clerics like Ayatollah Khomeini and their potential attraction to culturally alienated and economically disgruntled working class Iranians. Khomeini himself had been living in exile in Najaf, Iraq, since 1965, but his lectures on velayat-e faqih—his novel doctrine of guardianship by a leading Islamic jurist—were in circulation covertly among his followers in Iran. While clerical leaders willing to stay clear of politics were amply rewarded by the Shah’s regime, those who sided with Khomeini’s activist version of Shi’ism were sent to prison. In 1977 U.S. policy in Iran changed suddenly once again. President Jimmy Carter’s talk ofugg roxy boots human rights, and his apparent willingness to pressure the Shah to liberalize, emboldened the once-cowed Iranian opposition. Ahmadinejad was by then a college student and became active in organizing Islamic students. For young men like Ahmadinejad, the Shah’s liberalization policy provided an opportunity to safely enter the world of politics. For the Shah, however, this “opening-up” proved disastrous. A mix of personal, political, economic, and social factors came together and created the perfect political storm: the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Political openings are dangerous for despotic regimes. The ugg amelie suede sandalsShah was forced to liberalize, under direct pressure from the United States, at a time when oil revenues and economic growth were declining sharply. In 1976, he had gone on what the CIA called a “lending binge,” giving away almost two billion dollars. Yet less than two years later, Iran was back to borrowing. And the Shah himself was sick. Diagnosed with lymphoma and undergoing chemotherapy, he was on medication that made him depressed, paranoid, and pathologically indecisive. From his first days on the throne, he had shown a clear aversion to conflict and a decided inability to withstand pressure, and the medication only augmented this tendency. Ahmadinejad and his family were among the millions who became foot soldiers ofugg short boots Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution. Khomeini and his allies used an intricate network of mosques, religious classes, Qur’an recitals, and even modern lecture halls to consolidate their hold on traditional families. They also attracted new allies from the burgeoning middle class by offering what seemed to be a less dogmatic, more rational version of Shi’ism. The most successful such effort was made by Ali Shariati, a powerful orator whose lectures combined elements of Marxism, existentialism, structuralism, and the post-colonial theories of Franz Fanon with Shi’ism to fashion an ideology of social action. The clergy knew, through centuries of living close to the society, that the middle classes would be a dominant force in determining the future of Iran. Whoever formed an alliance with them would control the country’s future. Relying on the traditional pieties of the poor, the clergy’s new middle class allies made them a formidable force. Ahmadinejad learned that lesson well. The growing network of Islamic institutions almost went unnoticed by Iran’s secret police. The Shah ugg fluff flip flopremained concerned about secular democrats and the left; he believed the clergy—who shared his hostility to these elements—were his strategic allies. He also believed that the enfranchised peasantry, grateful for the land he had given them, would come to his defense. He was wrong. Nor could the Iranian middle classes be bribed into political silence in return for a better economic life. The revolution was at least partially the result of this miscalculation. (Ironically, today many of the same clergy who rode the Shah’s economic determinism intougg sunburst tall boots victory are banking on the same kind of policy. This time they call it “the China model,” and many in the regime’s leadership, notably Chairman of the Assembly of Experts Hashemi Rafsanjani, think it represents the only way the regime can survive in its current form. According to this “model,” the regime will allow the country to experience a liberalized economic boom, and in return the clergy will cling to its monopoly hold on power. For a variety of reasons, including the obvious inability of the Iranian regime to match China’s savings rate or internal market, or its ability to attract foreign investments, the China model is a pipe dream for Iran.)

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