Over the period Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been President of Iran, the man can't seem to get out of the way of his apparent stupidity.   It would be easy to think the man an uneducated peasant based on his bungled understanding of history and almost complete inability to engage in anything even remotely resembling diplomacy.   Yet, there is something rather cagey about his approach to international relations.   There is something there we all ought to fear.

Ahmadinejad has at times claimed the Holocaust never happened and was a fiction created by Europeans for ulterior reasons.   He has backed away from the did-not-happen comment but noted that while it did happen, it happened in Europe and was something the Europeans ought to have cleaned up themselves - Israel should be located in Europe.   He claims Israel started "tens of wars" over the past 60 years.   he doesn't seem to recognize that Arabs started the pattern of belligerence on the date of Israel's birth as a nation.   He completely ignores the fact that Jews occupied the land before any Arabs or other Muslims, that "Palestine" was an invention of the UN and European powers, that were it not for the UN, Palestine might very well be some European country's colony to this day.   But that's all besides the point.   Where Ahmadinejad's words are really interesting is in regards to his country's "civilian" nuclear plans.

Ahmadinejad has consistently claimed Iran has the right to engage in a civilian nuclear power program.   Yet, the very treaty under which nuclear technology is available at all, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran and almost 200 other countries were signatories, holds a diametrically opposed opinion.   While the treaty does permit the enrichment of uranium, a necessary part of conducting a civilian power program, it permits this practice only under a rigid regime of NPT inspection.   No state has yet developed nuclear weapons while a signatory of the NPT and subject to the inspection regime.   Iran refuses such inspection.   If they decided right now to reverse course and accept it, they have built up so much angst particularly on the part of European powers that they would be able to build the system with at virtually no cost.   Clearly that cannot be Ahmadinejad's aim unless he is completely stupid.

Ahmadinejad has gone so far as to challenge Us President George Bush to a televised debate on world issues.   Obviously, such a debate would do nothing in regards to the current UN demands that his country stop enrichment.   This challenge comes off as the words of an ignorant peasant to most people in the rest of the world.   But for all of Ahmadinejad's apparent stupidity, there is one part of the world which does not see his deeds and words for the uneducated opinions they present.   That part of the world is the largely undereducated Muslim population of the Middle East and beyond.   They see Ahmadinejad's words as meaningful and probably correct.   They don't have an educational basis with which to debate Ahmadinejad precisely because their learning is so restricted as to present only one side of any issue when it comes to history and international affairs.   So much so is this the case that it begins to resemble the indoctrination millions received under Soviet domination.   Simply put, Ahmadinejad is pandering to the base, the base of the majority of Muslims.

Obviously Ahmadinejad is very much a politician.   His perspective on things ought to be politically directed to his base of support.   But there's something much more sinister in all this.   The man is also pandering to a good portion of less educated westerners who often seek "peace at all costs."   He has created significant doubt in the many Europeans and Americans who do not look more deeply into issues than the surface of what they want to hear - like Iran only wants civilian nuclear power.   The rest of the world's leaders, the ones calling for a halt to Iran's uranium enrichment, must fight their battles on two fronts.   George Bush must not only convince Iran to stop, he must also convince the voting public that Iran has more than civilian power ambitions.   That's probably not as difficult as the effort required by European leaders to similarly convince their voters.   And all the while, Iran continues virtually unabated in its efforts to develop the bomb.

There's nothing Earth shattering in my brief analysis except the fact that Ahmadinejad knows exactly what he is doing.   He will accomplish his goal.   Iran will develop a nuclear weapon, if they haven't already.   So, what will be the next trick of this seemingly stupid peasant once he accomplishes the goal his neighbor, Saddam, was unable to accomplish?   When we can answer that question, and we should try to do it now, we'll know for sure what we have to do today.   The funny thing about time is nobody has figured out how to make it stop.   Unless we figure that one out soon, maybe Ahmadinejad will set his sights on it as his next feat of strength.