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Reporting from Beirut and Tehran —
In New York, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can boast that he's the talk of the town, appearing on television shows with the likes of Christiane Amanpour and Larry King, hobnobbing with fellow heads of state and addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.

In Tehran these days, the outspoken hard-line politician is under withering attack from all political directions. His detractors in recent weeks have included assorted fundamentalist clergymen who have accused him of interfering in religious affairs, a judiciary that humiliated him by delaying the release of American hiker Sarah Shourd, the editor of a right-wing newspaper handpicked by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the moderate head of the powerful Assembly of Experts, and a member of parliament who condemned him for praising the pre-Islamic Persian king Cyrus, who is an icon of secular nationalists.

"The president should be aware that he is obligated to promote Islam and not ancient Iran, and if he fails to fulfill his obligation, he will lose the support and trust of the Muslim nation of Iran," said lawmaker Ali Mottahari, who is loyal to a rival conservative faction.