TEL AVIV -- Iranians living abroad are ashamed of him. Wealthy Iranian entrepreneurs and political moderates shudder at every word he utters, especially on foreign policy. Foreign leaders and analysts have called him a "great danger" to the region. Israel's Iranian-born former defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, has likened him to Adolf Hitler.
Yet to millions of Iranians, far more than the West can imagine, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a rather popular guy.
Barring his outbursts denying the extent of the Holocaust and threatening Israel with annihilation, Mr. Ahmadinejad is saying and doing what a majority of Iranians want to hear. The key to his success is that he has learned who the average Iranian is and what he or she wants. The West has not.
In fact, the West has it completely wrong. Unlike reports in the Western media, the average Iranian is not the well-dressed, lipstick-wearing woman of northern Tehran who speaks with Western reporters about Channel, Gucci and Jennifer Lopez. The average Iranian is from the lower income brackets and lives outside Tehran.
Since taking office, Mr. Ahmadinejad has done much to reach out to these people, who live mostly in rural areas. This is not only because his origin is provincial. Former President Mohammad Khatami and the president before him, Hashemi Rafsanjani, also were from the provinces, but they treated Tehran as if it represented Iran. Through his constant trips to the provinces (13 so far), Mr. Ahmadinejad has made non-Tehranis feel as if they also belong to Iran.
More important, Mr. Ahmadinejad is putting his money where his mouth is. In his budget approved in December, expenditures in rural areas increased by as much as 180 percent in his first year as president.
The rural population in Iran likes and appreciates him for his generosity because in the years before Mr. Ahmadinejad, those outside Tehran were treated as if they were distant relatives when it came to government investment and expenditure. This appreciation of the president exists even though far more of the rural population made sacrifices for the sake of the 1979 Islamic revolution than were made by residents of Tehran.
So these days, when "their" man is in town, rural Iranians turn up in the hundreds of thousands to greet him. Many of the people want to share their problems with him. This became apparent recently when, during a trip to Golestan Province in the northeast, 135,000 letters addressed to Mr. Ahmadinejad were handed to his delegation and to him personally by people in the crowd.
