Certainly, caring for the welfare of the Iranian people has not been top of Ahmadinejad's list of priorities in the three-and-a-half years that he has been running the country. From the moment he came to power, Ahmadinejad has positioned himself not as the standard bearer of the Iranian revolution, but as the guardian and heir to Khomeini's revolution. And rather than dedicating his energy to more pressing issues, such as economic reform and adequate social provision, Ahmadinejad has gone out of his way to reignite the flames of militant Islam that so characterised Khomeini's arrival on the world stage 30 years ago.

Thus, in the early days of his presidency, Ahmadinejad worked hard to adopt the revolutionary persona that had served Khomeini so well during the early days of the revolution. Ahmadinejad's power base, both in the cities and the countryside, lies with the poor and the dispossessed, the sans-culottes of the revolution, and he spent much of his time touring the provinces seeking to rekindle the flames of the early revolution and return to the values of Khomeini's early years. He often used Khomeini's language to denounce the US and Iran's other perceived enemies, and was highly critical of their opposition to Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology, which he regarded as Iran's "legitimate right".

Ahmadinejad's devotion to Khomeini is essential to the West's understanding of the Iranian regime in two critical respects. A key principle of Khomeini's Islamic revolution is that his ideology should be exported throughout the entire Muslim world, irrespective of the traditional divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims. This helps to explain Iran's links to the radical Sunni movements Hamas in Gaza and the Taliban in Afghanistan.