Why is ahmadinejad hated

The president has sharply escalated Iran's standoff with the United States and its allies over several issues. Besides uranium enrichment, he has sparked international outrage for his calls to eliminate Israel and for casting doubt on the Nazi Holocaust.

Election results outside Tehran also showed a heavy defeat for Ahmadinejad supporters. None of his candidates won seats on the councils in the cities of Shiraz, Bandar Abbas, Sari, Zanjan, Rasht, Ilam, Sanandaj and Kerman, and many councils in other cities were divided like Tehran's. Similar anti-Ahmadinejad sentiment appeared in final results of a parallel election for the Assembly of Experts, the body of 86 senior clerics that monitors Iran's supreme Islamic leader and chooses his successor.

A big boost for moderates within the ruling Islamic establishment was visible in the large number of votes for former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who lost to Ahmadinejad in the presidential election runoff. Rafsanjani, who supports dialogue with the United States, got the most votes of any candidate from Tehran to win re-election to the assembly. Opposition candidates demanded that Ahmadinejad pay more attention to unemployment, now estimated at 11 percent, and other economic problems.

Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran who decides on the foreign policy, has repeatedly referred to the Holocaust as a distorted historical event and he is still in power. Iran and Israel had good relations under the Shah.

The Islamic Revolution ushered in a new period of anti-Israel hostility, but this was not accompanied by any attempt to deny the Holocaust. In fact during the Iran-Iraq war , Tehran found many Western films about World War II quite inspiring for the nation and national television was full of programmes sympathising with the victims of the war, including the Jews.

The first Iranian official to cast doubt on the Holocaust was actually Ayatollah Khamenei. In January , he referred to gas chambers in concentration camps as a story about which its truth was "not clear" and which was being used as "Zionist propaganda" to gain the sympathy of the world.

Mr Ahmadinejad followed this line and in , in his first year in office, called the Nazi extermination of the Jews "a myth".

During his tenure Iran wanted to threaten Israel and it was the safest way. Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli expert on Iran and the Middle East who was born and raised in Tehran, believes Mr Ahmadinejad made Holocaust denial a key tenet of his foreign policy for two reasons.

And he was criticized for his role in the disputed presidential elections, widely seen as rigged, that won him a second term. When the subject was discussed in our interview, Ahmadinejad did not express regret for this conference or for his other statements questioning the Holocaust. These days, Ahmadinejad is presenting a different face to the world. For example, in an April post, the former president of Iran mourned the recent passing of rapper Nipsey Hussle.

The spokesman demurred, saying that Israeli media was out of the question, but added that Ahmadinejad would be available for an interview, in Persian, with an American publication, and suggested The Nation. While I never said explicitly that I live in Jerusalem, that information is readily available, and I presume the spokesman looked me up before agreeing.

Escorted by his bodyguards, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, holds an anti-Israel placard, from his car, as he attends a rally marking the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, at the Azadi Freedom Square in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Feb.

This month, we're learning phrases on the topic of strength and power. Ready to get tough with us? So now we have a request.