In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate, welcome to my blog, a record of the day-to-day doings of a humble President.

Iranian President Mahmoud AhmadinejadOctober 19, 2007

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.

This Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari is the envy of the un-free world. Rumour has it he’s refused lucrative contracts from the Taliban, al-Qaeda and even a few Western oil companies to be their strongman in West Africa. Not your average street thug, my man; he’s a trained architect thug. But not even my head of the Guard can help me with spiralling inflation. Unlike writers, students and women, interest rates cannot be kicked and beaten into submission. “If it don’t bleed, can’t fix it,” he says. As I like to make clear, I am not one for economic theory. Allah will provide. In fact, I think economists are gay and, as everybody knows, there are no economists in Iran. Today, human rights groups complain that being an economist is still a crime in Iran. True, we hang them. But I really think it is indecent fAd for cheap Chinese jackets featuring Ahmadinejador young men in their early 20s to be talking about spiralling inflation and doubling house prices. After all, it’s all in the hands of Almighty – and the pockets of my predecessors. They say it is bad for the ladies in Iran. But on the whole women have it good. If you go to England you will see Muslim women who not only choose to wear the chador head-to-toe, but they wear those ones where you can only see their eyes. So how, I ask the sisters in Iran, how is it possible for them to complain about this humble cloth we ask them to wear? And do you think the husbands of those Muslim women in Bradford would allow their wives to have nose jobs? Of course not, yet around every corner in our beloved cities you will see women with their faces bandaged, fresh from the plastic surgery. I know that my people are dissatisfied, and if paying to have their noses broken makes them happy, I say, so be it. After all, Commander Jafari just does not have the time to do it for everyone for free.

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.