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Ahmadinejad's Political Gains in NYC
by
findingDulcinea Staff
New York rejects Ahmadinejad’s request to lay a wreath at Ground Zero; protestors mass at Columbia where he takes a public broadside from the university president––yet Iran’s media applaud his visit to the “Lion’s Den.”
30-Second Summary
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York prompted angry denunciations from politicians and pundits across the political spectrum. But amid the deluge of media coverage, a couple of pertinent facts went largely unmentioned.
First, Iran’s president is not the highest power in Iran. As Iranian-American writer Hooman Majd noted in The New York Observer, “It is the Supreme Leader”—Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—“who sets Iran’s foreign policy.”
Ahmadinejad does not have the final say on either the nuclear program or Iran’s stance toward Israel, the principal sources of antagonism between Iran and the West.
Secondly, the Iranian president comes to New York every year at this time to attend the U.N. General Assembly. He never expressed an interest in visiting the World Trade Center on previous visits.
When, in 2006, Time magazine asked him whether he had been to Ground Zero, he replied, “It was not necessary. It was widely covered in the media.”
If, as Time’s Bobby Ghosh concludes, Ahmadinejad’s request to lay a wreath at Ground Zero was a bid for media attention, then arguably it paid off. According to Reuters, the daily Iran News wrote that by “walking in the ‘Lion’s Den’ [Ahmadinejad] is sure to become even more of a hero in the Arab-Muslim street than before.” Both Ghosh and Majd surmise that he will likely return to Iran happy with his brief sojourn in New York.
According to these writers, his success comes not so much despite the vilification he received in the U.S. press, but because of it.
Majd argues, and is backed up by Time, that Ahmadinejad’s popularity ratings are low in Iran, and that his political power is waning. As a consequence, “In elevating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a position of power he simply doesn’t possess, the U.S. flatters him.”
First, Iran’s president is not the highest power in Iran. As Iranian-American writer Hooman Majd noted in The New York Observer, “It is the Supreme Leader”—Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—“who sets Iran’s foreign policy.”
Ahmadinejad does not have the final say on either the nuclear program or Iran’s stance toward Israel, the principal sources of antagonism between Iran and the West.
Secondly, the Iranian president comes to New York every year at this time to attend the U.N. General Assembly. He never expressed an interest in visiting the World Trade Center on previous visits.
When, in 2006, Time magazine asked him whether he had been to Ground Zero, he replied, “It was not necessary. It was widely covered in the media.”
If, as Time’s Bobby Ghosh concludes, Ahmadinejad’s request to lay a wreath at Ground Zero was a bid for media attention, then arguably it paid off. According to Reuters, the daily Iran News wrote that by “walking in the ‘Lion’s Den’ [Ahmadinejad] is sure to become even more of a hero in the Arab-Muslim street than before.” Both Ghosh and Majd surmise that he will likely return to Iran happy with his brief sojourn in New York.
According to these writers, his success comes not so much despite the vilification he received in the U.S. press, but because of it.
Majd argues, and is backed up by Time, that Ahmadinejad’s popularity ratings are low in Iran, and that his political power is waning. As a consequence, “In elevating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a position of power he simply doesn’t possess, the U.S. flatters him.”
Headline Links: Iran's media on Ahmadinejad in NYC
According to The New York Times, the Iranian media has depicted Ahmadinejad at Columbia as “a resolute leader who overcame an ambush of personal insults to present his views on topics like the Holocaust, Israel, the Palestinians and nuclear weapons, views that were described as having been well received by the audience.”
Source: The New York Times
According to Reuters, the daily Iran News wrote, “By fearlessly and courageously walking in the ‘Lion’s Den’ [Ahmadinejad] is sure to become even more of a hero in the Arab-Muslim street than before.” Apparently, other Iranian news sources condemned Bollinger’s treatment of Admadinejad at Columbia University. One exception to the unqualified Iranian praise, Reuters writes, was the reformist newspaper Aftab-e Yazd, which questioned whether the Iranian president really did respect academics, as he told the audience at Columbia. “Ahmadinejad’s logic and composure in the face of the Columbia University head’s disgracing remarks is a cause of pride for all Iranians,” it wrote. “However, history will remember this behavior only if … he can prove that he trusts all academics and in all affairs.”
Source: Reuters
For further coverage of Ahmadinejad's time in New York refer to our article "Iranian President Rattles New York."
Source: findingDulcinea
Reference Material
Since the overthrow of its monarchy in 1979, Iran has been ruled by Islamic clerics led by the "supreme leader," who is the chief military, religious, judicial, and media authority in the land. That position is currently held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was appointed for life in 2000. The current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is described by the BBC as a “hard-line conservative.” He was elected by popular vote in 2005, replacing reformist President Mohammad Khatami. The BBC profile of Iran provides an overview of the country, its leaders, and the Iranian media.
Source: The BBC
Key Players: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Contrary to opinions expressed in Time and The New York Observer (see Opinion), a June 2006 story, The Washington Post reported that ordinary Iranians view their president as an accessible, caring man of the people. “If his image in the West is that of a banty radical dangerously out of touch with reality,” writes the Post, “the prevailing impression in Iran is precisely the opposite.” It is worth noting that the Post analysis appeared almost six months before Ahmadinejad's failure in the local elections (see this section, below).
Source: The Washington Post
Writing in September 2007, Jeffrey Fleishman of the LA Times observes that Ahmadinejad has transcended the ethnic divisions of the Middle East to win admiration among diverse Muslim nations. “What's striking,” Fleishman writes, “is that the leader of a non-Arab Shiite nation has ingratiated himself with the Middle East’s predominantly Sunni Arab population.” This reports contrasts with those of other analysts who have described Ahmadinejad as lacking popular support in his own country and politically marginalized. It is worth nothing, however, that Fleishman’s story concentrates on Ahmadinejad’s popularity outside of Iran.
Source: The LA Times (free subsription may be required)
The Iranian local elections were the first electoral test of Ahmadinejad’s popularity after he came to power in 2005. His opponents carried the day, with moderate conservatives winning the majority of seats, followed by reformists, and Ahmadinejad’s ultra-conservatives trailing in third place. Arab news channel Al-Jazeera reported that the results were “seen as a sign of public discontent with Ahmadinejad’s constant fights with the West … His anti-Israel rhetoric and unbending stand on the nuclear program are believed to have divided Iranians.”
Source: Al-Jazeera
Opinion: What the media coverage means to Ahmadinejad
Iranian-American writer Hooman Majd, under the banner “Our Flattering Assault on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” writes that the Iranian president “is not the powerful player in Iran that he’s cracked up to be.” Plus, for those who would like to see the end of Ahmadinejad’s tenure as president, the real issue to focus on is, according to Majd, the Iranian economy: “the No.1 issue for Iranians and the one area he is ostensibly responsible for [and where his record has been] a dismal failure by many accounts.”
Source: The New York Observer
According to Time, Ahmadinejad’s request to lay a wreath at the WTC site “is a transparently political stunt, aimed at the audience back home.” That deduction is based at least in part on the fact that the Iranian leader expressed no interest in visiting the site when speaking to Time on his previous visit. The invective and anger Ahmadinejad has prompted allows him “to tell his fellow Iranian: ‘Look, I tried to be a nice guy, I wanted to lay a wreath on Ground Zero, but these Americans don’t appreciate our compassion.’”
Source: Time
Paul Mcleary, of Columbia Journalism Review, judges that it simply “doesn’t matter” how Iran’s state-controlled media chooses to represent Ahmadinejad’s trip to New York. “Iranians are smart enough to know that their media is a government production,” Mcleary writes. He supports his argument with reference to articles from Die Spiegel and Time magazine. Mcleary also commends Lee Bollinger for inviting Ahmadinejad to speak at the World Leaders Forum. (Bollinger is president of Columbia University, of which the Columbia School of Journalism, which produces the Review, is a part.) “What better way to combat idiocy,” Mcleary avers, “than by giving it a forum to publicly implode?”
Source: Columbia Journalism Review
James Carroll reflects that Iran was one of the first nations to express its condolences after 9/11, and that the military campaign against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was supported by Tehran. Carroll argues that refusing Ahmadinejad’s request “reinforces him at home,” and that this action is emblematic of the way George W. Bush “transformed Ground Zero from a site toward which the world looked with empathy for American pain into a hypernationalistic symbol of singularly American victimhood.”
Source: The Boston Globe
On this video, Michelle Malkin interviews Iranian activist Banafsheh Zand-Banazzi, who joined the protesters outside Columbia University on the day Ahmadinejad spoke there. “Most Muslims I know really don’t want to be intimidated by the Nazified version of Islam,” said Zand-Banazzi. “They just want to be able to slowly live their lives and move along in the progressive 21st-century path that the world is taking.”
Source: Michelle Malkin
Background: Censorship and the Iranian president's past controversies
Media censorship in Iran and its effects
In the battle for media control, the Iranian government banned satellite dishes in the mid-90s, and more recently barred Iranians from appearing on foreign-produced broadcasts. All areas of the media come under strict state control and censorship.
In the battle for media control, the Iranian government banned satellite dishes in the mid-90s, and more recently barred Iranians from appearing on foreign-produced broadcasts. All areas of the media come under strict state control and censorship.
The U.S. Congress has invested $50 million in the development of a satellite television channel broadcasting in Farsi, Iran’s first language, in the hope of encouraging the Iranian reformist movement, according to Die Spiegel. In Iran, the TV stations are staffed “at the government’s discretion,” and “the myriad of daily newspapers all hew close to the government line.” The Iranian people respond to government censorship, says Die Spiegel, with both “a healthy skepticism” and cynicism towards all media, resulting in a tendency to drift towards conspiracy theories “in which American power plays an outsize role.”
Source: Die Spiegel
Pervez Musharraf at Columbia
Jayati Vora recalls attending the World Leaders Forum at Columbia in 2005, when Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf spoke. Introductory leaflets distributed to the audience referred to Musharraf as having “assumed the office of chef executive of Pakistan in October 1999.” Vora observes, “Not once did Bollinger refer to the military man, who had overthrown the elected government and then refused to hold elections.” The contrast between the Columbia president’s behavior on that occasion and his treatment of Ahmadinejad, to Vora’s eyes, shows how far he is swayed by the prevailing winds of political opinion.
Source: The Nation
May '06 letter to Bush
President Ahmadinejad's eight-page letter to George Bush discussed several issues, including the attacks on the World Trade Center. The Iranian president described 9/11 as a “horrendous incident,” writing that the killing of innocent people was “deplorable.”
The letter also implied that the U.S. government had been involved in a cover-up regarding the atrocity: “Why have various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And why aren’t those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?” asked Ahmadinejad.
President Ahmadinejad's eight-page letter to George Bush discussed several issues, including the attacks on the World Trade Center. The Iranian president described 9/11 as a “horrendous incident,” writing that the killing of innocent people was “deplorable.”
The letter also implied that the U.S. government had been involved in a cover-up regarding the atrocity: “Why have various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And why aren’t those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?” asked Ahmadinejad.
The International Herald Tribune described the letter as the first direct communication from an Iranian leader to a U.S. president.
Source: The International Herald Tribune
The full text of the letter is available online.
Source: The Council on Foreign Relations
Ahmadinejad's Dec. '05 speech
An Iranian news agency reported that Ahmadinejad gave a speech describing the Holocaust, in which the German Nazis killed six million Jews, as a “myth.”
An Iranian news agency reported that Ahmadinejad gave a speech describing the Holocaust, in which the German Nazis killed six million Jews, as a “myth.”
CNN reported that in that speech Ahmadinejad suggested that Israel be moved to Europe, the United States, Canada, or Alaska. “They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions, and the prophets,” he said, according to the CNN translation.
Source: CNN
The United Nations condemned Ahmadinejad’s speech as being in contravention of the United Nations Charter. According to the document, all member nations, such as Iran, must “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
Source: CNN
Ahmadinejad's Oct. '05 speech
Speaking in Tehran at a program called “The World Without Zionism,” Ahmadinejad was reported to declare that Israel should be "wiped off the map."
Speaking in Tehran at a program called “The World Without Zionism,” Ahmadinejad was reported to declare that Israel should be "wiped off the map."
The Iranian press agency ISNA stated that the Iranian president said, “The establishment of Zionist regime [sic] was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world.”
Source: The International Herald Tribune
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