As he prepares to give up his office, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using what remains of his public platform to protect his followers and try to leave a lasting legacy in the Islamic Republic.

In his speech Sunday [Feb. 10] marking the 34th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad used a slogan — "Viva Spring" — that sought to piggyback on the Arab uprisings of the past two years and suggest that Iran would likewise benefit from greater transparency in government.

That Ahmadinejad should continue presenting himself as an agent of change nearly four years after "winning" fraud-tainted elections may strike observers as ironic, if not absurd. The widely presumed beneficiary of vote rigging in 2009, he went so far as to accuse the government of planning to "engineer" the next elections this June.

Yet in his willingness to dish dirt on other prominent figures in the regime — such as the family of parliament speaker Ali Larijani — Ahmadinejad is demonstrating, once again, his populist street-fighter origins. He is, after all, the man who campaigned on a slogan of sharing Iran’s oil wealth and who championed giving cash payments as part of subsidy reform — even as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s refusal to allow an accommodation with the West over the nuclear issue in 2009 has led the country down a path of increasing diplomatic isolation and economic hardship.