and puts in proper context. This is part of a fascinating interview by Amy Goodman about all aspects of the "troubles" in the Middle East in the age of Bush II. You can view the interview or read a transcription:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/25/1318238AMY GOODMAN: Professor Cole, Ahmadinejad's comments have come up again, as he comes to the United States, about denying the Holocaust.
JUAN COLE: Yes, Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier. He has a thing about Jews and Israel and the Holocaust that comes across very clearly when he talks about it. It's a kind of paranoia or fixation. And, you know, Ahmadinejad is not a really educated man. He's got an engineering degree. He's from what we call the bazaari class. This is people who, from a shopkeeping background or hung around at mosques, and kind of self-educated, and so forth. So he’s not a man of the world.
His predecessor, President Mohammad Khatami, lived in Germany for seven years and has written, using the German sociologist Jurgen Habermas’s theories of civil society. Khatami has written on dialogue of civilizations and open society, and so forth, and has reprimanded Ahmadinejad for his bizarre statements about the Holocaust. So this is not, you know, an Iranian government stance or an Iranian stance. This is something that’s peculiar to Ahmadinejad.
And remember, the Iranian president is powerless, virtually. The commander-in-chief of the armed forces is Khamenei, the Supreme Juridprudent. Ahmadinejad can consult on the appointment of cabinet ministers and ambassadors, but there are very few orders that he could give of any significance in the Iranian system. He's kind of like our Secretary of the Interior or something. So what he thinks about things isn't that important.
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