By: Reza Shafa
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad trips around the nation have not been welcomed even among his own peers let alone his very few controversial visits to other countries. His latest visit to Algeria on August 7, considering the very cold welcome by that country’s officials, according to Algerian media, made his situation even worse at home.
After his two days visit to Algiers, which was called off twice in the past by the Algerian officials, he returned to Iran empty-handed. The Iranian regime’s Office of Presidential Studies (OPS) held a number of meetings to assess Ahmadinejad’s latest trip, the outcome of which was a classified report for mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office. Briefly, the report indicated that the trip was a total disaster since it did not achieve any of its anticipated political and economical objectives.
Ahmadinejad in his trip intended to offer some financial deals to Algeria in return for political support from that country to ease its deadly isolation abroad; something the Algerian officials have turned down.
His visit to one the most important countries in Arab world was thoroughly reviewed by the OPS and some of its findings are as follows:
– In Algeria’s latest parliamentary elections only forty percent of the eligible Shiite population participated. It is an indication of lack of interest on the part of Shiites in fundamentalist doctrine advocated by the mullahs’ in Tehran. Ahmadinejad was not received with open arms by the official there, the report concluded. Therefore it was a huge damage to the Islamic Republic’s uncompromising image among its sympathizers in that country.
– As to the economical goals, the trip was supposed to have achieved, according to the report, great momentum for the clerical regime. Instead, Ahmadinejad’s offer for a new Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for exporting gas could not motivate Algeria enough to cooperate with the regime in other areas especially backing it in the U.N. for its nuclear ambitions. The officials in Algiers flatly rejected the offer since they are a major competitor to Tehran in exporting their own gas to countries such as the United States, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, and Tunisia.
The whole expedition was a big blow to Ahmadinejad’s endeavors to rally support around the mullahs’ drive to obtain nuclear weapons. Algiers had refused to host him in past and this time bluntly echoed the same message to Tehran.
Reza Shafa is an expert on the Iranian regime’s intelligence networks, both in Iran and abroad. He has done extensive research on VAVAK (MOIS), IRGC’s Intelligence Office, and Quds Force among others. Currently he is a contributor to NCRI website.
