IRAN: How I learned to stop worrying and love Ahmadinejad

As a reporter covering Iran, former president Mohammad Khatami drove me nuts. He frequently improvised his speeches and strayed far from his prepared remarks, often adjusting them to the audience he was addressing.

At the holy shrine of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, for example, he played up his Islamic credentials and devotion to the 1979 revolution that brought clerical rule to Iran. To students at Tehran University, he presented himself as a strident freedom fighter and advocate of individual and social liberty.

He was often totally misunderstood or misquoted because reporters didn’t know what to expect from him, and often, what he was talking about. You had to arrive on time for every speech and not miss a word. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, however, causes me no such worries.

“The utopia of mankind is a city where justice, affection, love, self-esteem, dignity, liberty, science, knowledge and wisdom rule,” he told students in the Armenian capital of Yerevan this week, before returning home to Tehran.

“The requirement and exigency of this very utopian city is the rule of pious and devout people,” he continued. “We all wait for the day to come when the perfect human being, the 12th Imam Mahdi will reappear accompanied with Jesus Christ and good governance will dominate universally in the world.”

In the past two years I have heard more or less the same speech or gist of it over and over on different occasions. So whenever and wherever Ahamadinejad makes a speech, I am sure if I do not arrive in time or listen to the whole thing, I will not miss much. I can just reread his previous speeches on other occasions or at different forums.

This is how I learned to appreciate Ahmadinejad. He may be the most consistent and predictable politician in a place rife with convoluted politics.

— Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran

Photo: Say what you will about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but he often recycles the same stump speech, making him a reporter’s dream. Credit: Getty Images.