Guardian: This (Iran) is more about national pride than nuclear weapons

[muriel_volestrangler]

Ahmadinejad is also emerging as a confident and skilful leader in his own right. During a series of public rallies in Ardabil province last month, he communicated easily and directly with exuberant crowds. Western caricatures portraying him as a "messianic dictator" or "mad mullah" are patently absurd. While his views on Israel and the Holocaust outrage many in the US and Europe, to many in Iran and the Arab world they seem unexceptional. Some observers in Tehran say that by articulating them so uncompromisingly he has actually enhanced his popularity.
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For most Iranians the most pressing issues are economic, and in this area Ahmadinejad has yet to deliver on his campaign promises. One embarrassing example is the fact that Iran, Opec's second-largest oil producer, has been considering petrol rationing this autumn due to a shortage of refining capacity.

Yet Ahmadinejad's main political resource is not Khomeini's controversial legacy. Neither is it his personal faith or his common touch. It is the strongly felt, growing sense of national pride found among Iranians at all levels of society.

Every Iranian knows of the machinations of Russia, France and especially Britain that kept Persia in a state of quasi-colonial subjugation for almost two centuries. In fact Britain - "the Old Fox" - is blamed to this day for most of Iran's external difficulties. Most see hostile US government attitudes since the revolution as a continuation of that victimisation. And the vast majority view attempts to halt or stymie the country's nuclear programmes as merely symptomatic of unchanging western "imperialist" or "hegemonistic" tendencies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1867583,00.html