"It is more of a scream that reflects the incapacity of both the Arab regimes and Arab peoples to achieve anything on the regional level," said Nabil Abdel Fattah, a political analyst with Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
Ahmed Taher, an Egyptian doctor, credits Ahmadinejad for pursuing nuclear technology, which Tehran says is for civilian use, but the U.S. suspects is for weapons.
"It's beyond doubt that Ahmadinejad's popularity surpasses any other leader in the Middle East," Taher said. "We shouldn't blame him for seeking nuclear weapons. Israel has them. It will be more balance for Muslims if we have them too. Israel is much more dangerous to the world than Ahmadinejad."
Some of the Iranian president's admirers, however, are concerned about his provocative nature, bellicose quips and coyness about Iran's nuclear intentions. Comparisons to Nasser's triumphs and defeats limn the edge of conversation about the Iranian leader: Nasser was victorious in the Suez crisis, but a decade later his miscalculations led to humiliating Arab defeat by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.
"He's too audacious and this hurts him," said Reda Kheshein, an accountant scanning headlines at a newsstand in Tahrir Square in Cairo. "He doesn't have the right to say he wants to destroy Israel. He needs to be reasonable, not risky. Unfortunately, we suffered from riskiness in the past. Look at Nasser, he made a very risky decisions. We don't need any more martyrs."
Other Arabs wonder about Ahmadinejad's strategy in a region where political theater and hyperbole often mask quieter, behind-the-scenes diplomacy. They suggest that the Iranian president, who seldom displays shades of nuance and is given wide latitude by Iran's ruling religious establishment, is as spooky as he is inspiring.
"He has a sense of belonging to the Muslim world. He always stands by Muslim nations," said Hussein Ali, a guide waiting for a bus. "But I don't like his inability to unify his own people and his insistence on developing nuclear capabilities that would be dangerous to the whole world. But we need his strong Islamic voice to protect us from the West."
Ibrahim Sufa, a Jordanian shop owner, said Ahmadinejad is shrewd and calculating when it comes to spin.
"He's good. I feel he's really a moderate. He talks in the extreme, but he acts with restraint," Sufa said. "If America hits him, the whole region will go on fire."
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jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
Noha El-Hennawy of The Times' Cairo Bureau and special correspondent Ranya Kadri in Jordan contributed to this report.
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Begin text of infobox
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Born: Oct. 28, 1956, in the village of Aradan, near the city of Garmsar, southeast of Tehran. One of seven children of a blacksmith father. Family moved to Tehran when he was 1.
Education: Doctorate in transportation engineering from the University of Science and Technology in Tehran, 1997.
Family: Married, with two sons and a daughter.
Career: President since August 2005. Mayor of Tehran, 2003-05. Governor-general of Ardabil province, 1993-97. Veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. On the faculty of the University of Science and Technology since 1988. Belonged to a student association whose members were among the group that seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Source: Times researcher John Tyrrell
