Yesterday was tough. The students at Tehran University greeted me with placards that said, “We have questions too, why just Columbia?” And I say to the students, this is not Columbia, this is the blessed Islamic Republic. We do things differently here.
Why, the other day I heard a rock band performing illegally at a party around the corner from where I live. Be assured that all of its members are in prison now, along with the DJ and the party guests. The basement they were in is now being investigated for traces of freedom. Now that’s rock banned, Iranian-style.
The students called me a dictator. Part of me likes that, the other says, “No, I am not a dictator, I merely find myself in circumstances propitious to dictation.” For example, I have a fine new head of the Revolutionary Guard. He is a good man with a fine pair of boots which his subordinates polish everyday, but like me he is a man of the people and insists on wiping their blood off himself.
To those who would criticise me for using foreign policy to distract my people from domestic matters I say this: for Allah’s sake think of the plight of the Palestinians. To those who would accuse me of being an anti-Semite or against the people of America I say, hey, ya got me, but I’m a kosher guy.
But seriously, I was genuinely distraught that they didn’t allow me to visit Ground Zero when I went to New York. They misunderstood my intention. I did not want to gloat. It’s about respect. If I was in Amsterdam, don’t you think I would go to the Anne Frank museum? I wish no one ill. Let’s join hands. Christian, Jew, Muslim – we believe in the same god. All we need is love. That’s what I will tell the students from yesterday’s demonstration when I visit them in their cells.
Hailed as spirited radicals for their work in their native Ukraine, “sextremist” activists Femen have attracted as many critics as admirers. Agata Pyzik investigates