The crowds came out for Ahmadinejad, but their hostility was obvious, if not widely reported.
Ahmadinejad was booed as
his convoy drove past in Baghdad. As a result, Iranian television
showed very little footage of Ahmadinejad's arrival.
The protests against Ahmadinejad were not isolated to Baghdad but continued in almost every major
stop on the Iraqi tour, including Shi'ite Basra, security officials said. Demonstrators, posters, banners and literally the writing on the walls accused Ahmadinejad
of meddling in Iraq.
The reception Ahmadinejad received in Baghdad made the president's
entourage nervous, the officials said. Ahmadinejad had been scheduled to visit the Shi'ite
cities of Karbala and Najaf as part of his pilgrimage.
But Iranian agents warned the president to stay away. The reason:
thousands of Shi'ites were planning to protest Ahmadinejad's visit and
denounce him as an aggressor. The president was also told that many Shi'ite
clerics and dignitaries would not greet him.
Iran will not be deterred, security officials said. Indeed,
Teheran pours hundreds of millions of dollars each year in financing Shi'ite
militias and encouraging attacks on the U.S.-led coalition.
But what has become clear to Iran's regime is that Iraq's Shi'ite community may not want to
be part of Iran or even in its orbit, the officials said.
