An Iranian Answers Ahmadinejad

Recently, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote an open letter to the American people. After reading Ahmadinejad's missive, Iranian satirist Ebrahim Nabavi decided to write a response, which was posted to an Iranian newspaper web site. MEMRI provides a lengthy excerpt from Mr. Nabavi's essay:

"In your letter to the American people, you wrote, 'Both our nations are God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking, and both seek dignity, respect and perfection. Both greatly value and readily embrace the promotion of human ideals such as compassion, empathy, respect for the rights of human beings, securing justice and equity, and defending the innocent and the weak against oppressors and bullies.'

"Mr. Ahmadinejad! A great number of the words you used are empty and meaningless…. The Iranian people are not God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking, because if they were, you would not have been their president.

"Are you serious? Or you are playing with us? You support human ideals? Do people like journalists even have any human rights in Iran? How can you call yourself a defender of human ideals when your political faction shut down 150 publications in the past four years? How dare you speak of defending human ideals in a country where the rights of women, ethnic groups, religious minorities and the general public are constantly under attack, and where women do not even have the right to gather in defense of their rights?"

(Emphasis added-DD)


As I've written about previously, any claims by Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials to support human rights are belied by their lengthy record of brutal repression. The Iranian regime's actions speak far more clearly than do its words.