Iranian president wins the media chess game

By Lee Feder

Last week the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spoke at Columbia University in New York at the invitation of the institution’s president Lee Bollinger. Among the various topics about which President Ahmadinejad enlightened his audience were the lack of homosexuality in Iran, the uncertainty of the Holocaust’s occurrence and Iran’s lack of desire to procure nuclear weapons.

President Bollinger has taken flak both for inviting Ahmadinejad and his shockingly rude introduction in which he labeled the Iranian President “a petty and cruel dictator” as well as either “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.” Unsurprisingly, the media has focused on Bollinger’s questionable judgments and ignored the more important issue of America’s ignorance of world policy in general and its enemies in particular.

Since President Bush declared Iran part of the “Axis of Evil,” the United States has invaded one Axis member and is negotiation a significant nuclear weapons deal with another. Iran, however, has received mainly diplomatic threats and media coverage. While Iran might be a threat to world security, it gains strength from the American media covering the outlandish yet largely benign statements its president makes.

How can declaring homosexuality a foreign ill, ignoring the historical event known as the Holocaust, and openly declaring the intent to obtain nuclear weapons be benign statements?

Quite simply, President Ahmadinejad is a very smart man with very little power. Ayatollah Ali Khomeini runs Iran and understands when his power is at risk. Several years ago when Ahmadinejad accelerated his rhetoric promoting developing nuclear technology, Khomeini sensed the very real international pressure opposing such a move. He communicated to the president that going nuclear at that juncture was not in Iran’s interest and Ahmadinejad toned down his advocacy. As smart as Ahmadinejad is, Khomeini showed he was smarter.

Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!

  • Catch the latest on University of Illinois news, sports, and more. Delivered every weekday.
  • Stay up to date on all things Illini sports. Delivered every Monday.
Thank you for subscribing!

Fundamentally, the two have very different goals for Iran. Ahmadinejad is an unpopular Islamicist who would fit Bollinger’s description if he had absolute power. Khomeini, on the other hand, is a self-interested dictator whose primary concern is maintaining power.

From an American perspective, foreign dictators rarely need to concern themselves with remaining in power (after all, the typically rule by fiat backed by the state’s military might), but Khomeini’s concern is real. Iran has an educated population, sufficient oil to provide it wealth for years to come, and most importantly, a younger progressive generation. While many young Arabs revile the United States and Israel, the new Persian generation in Iran merely rejects American imperialism while respecting democracy and the underlying principles of freedom.

Though the reformist government lost power in 2005 to Ahmadinejad’s conservatives, the undercurrent of populism remains strong. The danger of Iran is like that of Cuba in the 1970’s. The danger lies only in their politics and not in the state itself. The country urgently wants to move beyond its current form and evolve into a modern Islamic Republic with more freedoms and human rights.

The Columbia invite did little to support that progressive undercurrent but it did provide rhetorical ammunition for Ahmadinejad to criticize the U.S. One advantage of living in a free country is that Bollinger had the right to invite the Iranian president speak at his institution. The level of coverage given to a figurehead’s ravings, however, is incredibly disproportionate to the threat. Ahmadinejad’s power lies purely in attracting public attention and thus most of his statements are inflammatory and without backing.

The trip to Columbia was a brilliant publicity stunt to make the U.S. look like an unfriendly host, and the university capitulated spectacularly by inviting a world leader to speak and lambasting him before he even opens his mouth. The Iranian president outplayed Bollinger in the international foreign policy chess game, yet most news media has yet to say as much.

Iran manipulated the American media into giving it what it wants: publicity and a moderately advantageous foreign policy position. Columbia and Bollinger were not committing the most egregious judgment errors. Those covering the issue, who missed the most important aspects, are at fault for falling victim to a paper tiger’s trap.