When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged from seemingly nowhere to capture the Iranian presidency in 2005, American officials were dumbfounded. Whereas his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, sought to assuage the West with talk of ‘dialogue of civilizations’, Ahmadinejad was crude and coarse.

How has the president managed to build such a formidable power base? Who are the key members of his coterie, and will they enable their benefactor to outsmart the supreme leader to become Iran's effective ruler?

In the latest Middle Eastern Outlook, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Iran scholar Ali Alfoneh writes about Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's power struggle with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Whether Ahmadinejad is impeached or not, the latest conflict among the civilian leaders has made the IRGC the most important arbiter of power in the Islamic Republic.

February and March were bad months for the Western presence in Afghanistan. First the accidental burning of the Quran and then a lone soldier’s massacre of Afghan civilians undercut U.S. efforts to win Afghan hearts and minds.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not have many friends, especially not in Iran, but he appears to have quite a fan club in the distant United States.

I keep replaying the video in my mind of the leader of the free world running a game of three card monte with the Russian government against the American people—especially that godawful little gesture where Obama reaches toward Medvedev for an intimate moment:

Iran's nuclear and foreign policies rely upon a worldview that takes confidence from the support lent Tehran by allies in the developing world.