Ahmadinejad – The Populist and the Pariah

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is about to step down as Iran’s President; his two terms of office are up. James Reynolds, the BBC’s Iran correspondent, looks back at his time in power.

How did a little known local politician with scruffy clothes and a PhD in traffic management, become a superstar, or a super-villain?

Was the West right to take Ahmadinejad’s often outrageous and provocative rhetoric seriously? Or did it overestimate the threat posed by an opportunist with little actual power?