IRAN: Ahmadinejad campaign focuses on foreign policy
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to be taking a lesson from American politicians, getting started super-early for elections.
Indeed, though Iran’s 2009 presidential elections are almost a year away, Ahmadinejad has been swinging through the provinces as if the vote were taking place next week.
Today he arrived in Shahr-e-Kord, a town in one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces, with an official unemployment rate of 17.6%.
Ahmadinejad said he felt people’s pain.
But his proposed solutions for their economic problems sounded a lot like the kind of election-year promises that never get fulfilled: the construction of 10 tourist resorts in the poor backwater and the launching of gas and oil exploration in the untapped fields of the province.
But much of his speech zeroed in on Iran’s role on the international scene.
‘This year is the year of conspiracies of the enemies,’ he said. ‘The Iranian nation has foiled all the plots — political, propaganda, militaristic and nuclear plots.’
Below are some more excerpts:
ON THE RECENT U.N. FOOD CONFERENCE IN ROME: Despite some false rumors here, 800 journalists came to hear my remarks. For 15 minutes I talked about the late Imam [Ruhollah Khomeini] and his lofty ideals and ideals of the Iranian nation... ON SANCTIONS: The Iranian nation in the past years has faced the heaviest sanctions since the beginning of the revolution to cut our economic arteries. In vain, our enemies tried to put pressure economically, make propaganda and impose militaristic threats on us, but I assure you that our enemies’ dream will not be fulfilled and the enemies will go to their graves without fulfilling their mischievous and satanic dreams... ON PRESIDENT BUSH: This man who is inhuman shuttles here and there in the world to find a way to bother the Iranian nation by creating a commotion, a pinch or stir to the Iranian nation. But before you, you the great and honorable people I want to tell the enemies and their corrupted stooges inside the country, that by God’s help, your term has come to end and you will not be able to access one inch of our sacred territory of Iran. If anyone dares to transgress our land, the very brave young people of this province will suffice...
— Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran