If They’d Been Nice To Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected President of Iran in 2005 and served two four year terms before returning to his original profession as a civil engineer. He had also previously served as Mayor of Teheran. In December 2006, his Government organised the Global Vision Conference on the Holocaust, which led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Western media. How this came about requires some explanation.

In September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad.  Most Moslems are not the intolerant bigots they are sometimes made out to be, but one thing that always agitates them is depiction of their Prophet. There is also a lunatic fringe in Islam as in other religions, and it should have been obvious these cartoons would provoke widespread outrage.

On the grounds of freedom of the press and free speech (of course), these cartoons were reprinted widely around the world. Then, thinking sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri ran an international competition on another religion, that of the Holocaust, in particular cartoonists from all over the world were invited to submit cartoons on the subject. Predictably, the same people who championed insulting Islam condemned this contest as anti-Semitic. Then the Global Vision Conference was held. This was attended by Holocaust Revisionists, Holocaust true believers, and the Great Man himself. Ahmadinejad is a plain speaking sort and has never been shy about being skeptical of the extent of what is more accurately styled the Nazi persecution or the Jewish Tragedy.

 This led to his demonisation by the Western media, but there was more to come. After he came to power in 2005, he was widely quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map, the implication being that he advocated a genocidal war against Israel, like Hamas is actually doing now. In reality he meant it should vanish from the face of the Earth in the same way as had the Apartheid régime of South Africa.

Ahmadinejad does not have much in common with Donald Trump, but like the former US President, his bark is worse than his bite. In March 2007,  fifteen members of the Royal Navy in two inflatable boats were seized by the Iranian Navy. They were on an innocent mission but under other circumstances or other leadership, they might have been accused of being spies. This was obviously a serious incident, but a fortnight later, Ahmadinejad ordered their release and met with them prior to that. These are not the actions of a tyrant. All the same, when he was invited to speak at Columbia University in September the same year, he was met by jeering crowds and treated like dirt, including by the University’s President.

During his speech he was ridiculed for supposedly claiming there are no homosexuals in Iran when clearly what he meant was that “we” do not have this problem (sexual perversion) like in the West.

The Middle East is now in greater turmoil than it has been for decades. If instead of treating Ahmadinejad first as a tyrant then a clown but as the true statesman he was, it is most unlikely the horrors of October 7 or anything like it would have occurred.