The Mayor of Tehran

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's President and former Mayor of Tehran, is an unusual cat. I offered my gloss on why he may be willing to participate in a boat-rocking exercise with Nixon's intellectual offspring, but until this evening hadn't seen a comparable analysis of his domestic political acumen. Tim Porteous, who has worked for both the BBC and Her Majesty's Government, recently returned from Iran and warns not to underestimate Ahmadinejad. It's the best – and only – example of this sort of thing I've seen, and I'm surprised it hasn't been widely linked elsewhere (or linked at all, yet, so far as I can tell).