MICHAEL TOTTEN: Ahmadinejad: A Man Of The Cities. “Cities everywhere in the world are more broadly liberal and cosmopolitan than small towns and villages. Rural areas in the Middle East are often startlingly conservative, especially from the point of view of Western visitors like me and my colleagues in the media. This does not mean, however, that country people are more likely to support fascist political movements. Egypt’s Bedouin, for instance, are far more open-minded about and friendly toward Jews and Israelis than are the denizens of cities like Cairo. Backers of the Iraqi insurgency were based primarily in urban areas like Baghdad, Ramadi, and Fallujah. And as Nate Silver documents with hard data at FiveThirtyEight, even in 2005 most of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supporters lived in Iranian cities, not the countryside.”