Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has begun his campaign for June’s presidential elections in typical style, calling Iran’s enemies “dogs” and exhorting his countrymen to stay the aggressive, isolationist course he has taken them down insisting “if you retreat, they attack. If you attack, they retreat.” The best possible attack the Iranian people could stage in June and the one that would be most likely to force the retreat of Iran’s “enemies”, would be to exercise the democratic rights Iranians still have and eject Mr Ahmadinejad from power. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a self-fulfilling prophecy, or rather, a self-fulfilling nightmare. He and others in the ultra conservative Iranian regime live in a perpetual siege mentality, convinced that all those around them seek nothing but their destruction. The policy and the oratory that this in turn perpetuates, mainly the relentless pursuit of nuclear capabilities, active support for Hezbollah and Hamas amongst others, and repeated calls for Israel’s destruction does nothing but add external pressure on Iran, in turn further convincing the regime that all the world is out to get them, and on it goes.

The possibility of successful external engagement with this regime is next to none. Only if the moderates and reformists in Iran can defy the Ayatollahs and vote in a president receptive to co-operation with the outside world can they hope to see the kind of foreign retreat that Mr Ahmadinejad and doubtless they themselves are looking for. This is by no means a wholly implausable possibility. Contrary to the images usually shown on Western televisions, of swarms of Iranians chanting death to America and death to Israel after Friday prayers, the majority of Iranians seek reconciliation with the West and others in the Middle East, as opposed to further confrontation. From reformers to conservatives, one of the latest reports on Iranian public opinion shows that more Iranians favour cooperation with other Middle Eastern countries than any other course, including seeing Iran the dominant power in the region. Likewise, over 60 per cent believe that it is possible to find common cultural ground with the West. Perhaps most revealing, however, is that more than 90 per cent of all Iranians wish to forego nuclear weapons. All of this is in very stark contrast with the public ravings of Ahmadinejad and it is also at odds with much popular Western opinion about ordinary Iranians.

The economic and political consequences of Ahmadinejad’s wretched isolationism are clearly taking their toll. Yet in spite of the aspirations of most Iranians for a rapprochement with the outside world, many remain highly suspicious of it. The Iranian government still enjoys the support of most Iranians, and the truth is that just as Ahmadinejad is bringing about his own worst fears through the policies he pursues, so Western policy towards Iran can also be its own worst enemy.

For some reason, strategists, politicians and diplomats on both sides seem either unwilling or unable to put themselves in the other man’s shoes. Neither the West nor Israel seems to take sufficient account of why Iran pursues the policies that it does, instead focusing exclusively on how to stop those policies from being realised. This is nowhere more evident than in the West’s approach to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Clearly, the ambition for nuclear capability is not an end in itself but a means to an end. In the eyes of the Iranian regime, nuclear capability equals greater security and greater regional influence. But security from what and influence why? It is precisely because the regime believes that all the world is out to get them that they are so desperate to acquire a nuclear bomb. The harder the West pushes Iran, and the louder Israel rattles the sabre, the more convinced becomes the regime of the need for a bomb to silence them. The current regime is beyond redemption, and Ahmadinejad’s latest utterances show that. However, that is not to say that the Iranian people themselves cannot still be won round. Yet to do this, both the West and Israel may need to radically rethink their strategy towards Iran. It is here that Aesop’s fable of the sun and the wind comes to mind: the harder you push another to do something they do not want to do, the harder they will resist, particularly if they feel threatened.

This is especially true of Israel. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported yesterday that one in four Israelis would consider leaving the country if Iran got the bomb, reflecting growing concern that Iran’s nuclear ambitions may soon be realised. Israel has made it clear that it cannot and will not tolerate such a thing coming to pass, and has warned both Iran and the international community, in not quite so many words, that it will not hesitate to bomb Irananian nuclear facilities if the international community and the IAEA cannot convince the regime to give up its nuclear ambitions peacefully. With the election of Likud right-winger Binyamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister in March, the chance of a tempered Israeli policy towards Iran is smaller still. Yet the international community, and in particular the United States, cannot allow Israel to pursue this course, for if there is one thing that would unite Iranians behind Ahmadinejad and the need for nuclear capabilities, it would be military action against Iran. At present, most Iranians still believe that nuclear ambition is costing more than it’s worth. Nothing would change that view quicker than military strikes.

The campaign that the West needs to wage in Iran in the run up to the June elections, is one that convinces Iranians of the horrendous counterproductivity of the current regime’s actions. Iranians must be made to believe that the very things Ahmadinjad’s programme hopes to achieve - military and economic security and regional respect and influence - can only be achieved through working with, as opposed to against the international community. Unfortunately, an insufficient number of Iranians still believe this, partly because the United States and Israel have threatened Iran with too much stick, with very few real carrots in sight. The reason so many Iranians burn the American flag each Friday after prayers is because they see the United States as implaccably opposed to themselves and everything they stand for. Labelled part of the “Axis of Evil” by George W. Bush, there may have been truth in this under the previous administration. Obama needs to show Iranian’s that this is no longer so, and that means a huge PR campaign that reaches ordinary Iranians to convince them of this. There are signs that Obama is already working in this direction. Haaretz also reported yesterday that “Israel’s military option against Iran has died”, thanks to pressure from the Obama administration forbidding any such action. Whether this is actually so remains to be seen.

Either way, the first rule in politics is always that perception is as, if not more important than reality. In actually convincing Iranians that the West is not out to get them, the US and others need to make a much bigger effort.