Ahmadinejad Got What He Wanted
My thoughts on Ahmadinejad’s request to lay a wreath at the site of the WTC in New York City, and the expected denial of permission:
Ahmadinejad got exactly what he wanted out of this, and it had nothing to do with the US. He knew that there’d be a riot in NYC if he actually stepped foot on Ground Zero, and that his security forces (as well as their US counterparts) would never allow such a controversial visit in such an exposed area.
Ahmadinejad isn’t the Fearless Leader of Iran that US media often makes him out to be. For some strange reason, we usually don’t hear about the internal politics of Iran, when Ahmadinejad is at tension with elements of Iran’s Parliament as well as Ayatollah Khamenei over issues of both domestic and foreign policy. Internally, Ahmadinejad is often seen as not Islamic enough.
So Ahmadinejad makes an “overture of peace” to the United States, with the expected outcry from US citizens following shortly after. “They don’t want peace with us,” he can tell Iranians in speeches, “all they have in their hearts is hatred for Muslims.”
Which isn’t necessarily true, but certainly helps him draw some perceived distance from the west in the political sphere in Iran and the Islamic Middle East in general. There’s not much else we could have done, but it’s helpful to understand that (in my opinion) the obviously outrageous proposal for a visit wasn’t due to stupidity or even malice, but as a political display not even really meant for our consumption.
September 24th, 2007 at 12:47 am
That’s exactly what I thought, too. It was all a clever maneuver to manipulate sympathies back home.
September 24th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Oh, now he can add what the president of Columbia Univeristy said, too!