The President’s Hand

What is a president to do when he is no longer popular in his own country because he cannot provide the economic prosperity that his citizens desire? It’s simple; he goes to New York!

This is what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did, because he knows very well that the Persians back home are not moved by his verbal attacks against the U.S. and against the existence of the state of Israel. He also knows that they are increasingly disgruntled by the fact that the domestic economy shows no signs of improvement. The people are worried about real problems, not the official propaganda in Tehran.

Until now, every time he participated in the yearly session of the UN General Assembly, American journalists portrayed him as a mere clown who was promoted, tolerated and supported by Iranian Ayatollahs.

This time, however, Ahmadinejad’s public relations team did a very good job. Not only was the Iranian president invited to the most important TV stations, but he was also treated with the utmost grace, as no one asked him the truly important questions.

It was obvious that, for clearly political reasons, President Ahmadinejad had his public image subtly cleaned up. As if the American people could ever forget the fraudulent way in which this insignificant Mahmoud won the last election, his decision to stamp out the protests of the opposition, his irrational statements about removing the state of Israel from the map of the Middle East…

It seemed that all his interviewers, including television legends such as Larry King and Christiane Amanpour, knew nothing about the practice tolerated by the Tehran regime in the 21st century, that women found guilty of certain crimes be buried up to their armpits in the ground and stoned to death by “brave men only”!

On the contrary, the distinguished Iranian guest managed to calmly dominate the TV studios, with his well-rehearsed smiles and absurd perorations on the nonexistence of the Holocaust, the obvious decline of capitalism, the supremacy of the Iranian legal system as compared to the American one (!) and all the things for which the Zionist regime — the Tehran label for the state of Israel — is to blame.

The zenith of these TV performances was his answer to the question of what his response would be if President Obama extended a hand to him. He laughed and replied, “Which hand did he extend? His right hand or left hand?”

And the American viewers were flabbergasted.