Coming after younger Iranian hardliners dominated the 2003 municipal council elections and the 2004 parliamentary contest, the victory of Mahmud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential race represented a seemingly unstoppable political juggernaut. Yet within weeks of Ahmadinejad's inauguration, the legislature demonstrated that it would not be a rubber stamp by rejecting four of his cabinet nominees. In the following months, the legislature expressed its dissatisfaction with many of Ahmadinejad's personnel appointments, his economic measures, and his annual budget. Tehran also finds itself dealing with ethnic disturbances in the northwest and southwest. Ahmadinejad's international political initiatives -- his call for the destruction of Israel and the United States, his denial of the Holocaust, and his administration's obstinacy on the nuclear issue -- also earned a great deal of criticism at home. These aspects of Iranian politics have implications that are relevant to our discussion today about U.S. policy, and they shed light on cleavages in the Iranian body politic.