Does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad want to be president of Iran again?

AS MEMBERS OF the Iranian regime marched through the capital, Tehran, to mark Revolution Day on February 10th, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held his own gathering. The former president, an irritant to clerics and liberals alike, had his fans gather outside his flat in a modest neighbourhood of Tehran, where they asked God to grant him a third term in office. The police eventually dispersed the crowd for gathering without a licence. With no hint of irony, Mr Ahmadinejad (pictured) then accused the relatively moderate current president, Hassan Rouhani, of “encroaching on the sanctity of liberty”.Mr Ahmadinejad did plenty of that when he was in office. In 2009, after winning a second term in a fishy election, he crushed the largest protests in Iran since the revolution in 1979. His foes saw him as a populist troublemaker. Even his powerful allies grew tired of him. But as Iran gears up for an election in June, Mr Ahmadinejad is considering another run. Polls say he is the favourite—if the clerics let him stand. “He has immense popularity, especially among less educated and less affluent Iranians,” says Sadiq Zibakalam, a political scientist.