Ahmadinejad: Shia folk hero of Arab world

Iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad, a flinty populist in a zip-up jacket whose scathing rhetoric and defiance of Washington are often caricatured in the Western media,

Iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad, a flinty populist in a zip-up jacket whose scathing rhetoric and defiance of Washington are often caricatured in the Western media, has transcended national and religious divides to become a folk hero across the Middle East.

The diminutive, at times inscrutable, president is a wellspring of stinging sound-bites and swagger for Muslims who complain that their own leaders are too beholden to or frightened of the Bush administration. Ahmadinejad is an easy sell : a streetwise politician with nuclear ambitions and an open microphone.

“I like him a lot,” said Mahmoud Ali, a medical student in Cairo. “He’s trying to protect himself and his nation from the dangers around him. He makes me feel proud. He’s a symbol of Islam. He seems the only person capable of taking a stand against Israel and the West. Unfortunately, Egypt has gotten too comfortable with Washington.”

Ahmadinejad’s appeal is especially strong in Egypt, where he is compared to the late president Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose bold, yet doomed, vision of pan-Arabism in the 1950s was also aimed at stemming Western influence. What’s striking in Ahmadinejad’s case, however, is that the leader of a non-Arab Shiite nation has ingratiated himself with the Middle East’s predominantly Sunni Arab population.

In praising the Iranian president, Arabs quickly navigate around historical religious animosities and present-day fears that Iran is undermining Sunnis in Iraq and elsewhere. They prefer to speak of how Ahmadinejad is a rallying voice for Islam at a time the region is bewildered by its powerlessness to fix Iraq, Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “He’s a brave man,” said Tayseer Ibrahim, an employee of the Egyptian Education Ministry.

“He’s standing up to the US. He could have been intimidated after what happened to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but he’s not.”

Munther Farrah, who sells nuts and chocolates in Amman, the Jordanian capital, said he and other Sunnis are troubled by Iran’s Shiite theocracy . “But Ahmadinejad is still liked,” he said. “We are with him as long as he’s against Israel and the US.”

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Iran runs its own version of the omnipresent, repressive state, but Ahmadinejad’s intense distrust of the U.S. and hatred of Israel have elevated him to mythical status for the frustrated Arab mechanic, taxi driver or lawyer seeking a pure, forceful message. The sentiment is similar to the respect won by Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006, and Hamas, the radical Palestinian party that seized control of the Gaza Strip in June.

Both were credited with tenacity and portrayed as underdogs battling outside the system against larger enemies. This type of resolve, along with Iran’s pride as a sovereign state, echoes through Ahmadinejad’s speeches and asides.