Watching Obama from Tehran
Iranian President Ahmadinejad has great admiration for his own fortune-telling capabilities. For years, he has been making all kinds of predictions. Among his most famous are the destruction of Israel and the end of the “U.S. empire.” In March 2008, he made another prediction. “They would not allow Obama to become the U.S. president,” declared the Iranian president confidently in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais. This new failure in his clairvoyance has probably disappointed the president. Nevertheless, he took the time to congratulate the man he thought would never become president by saying, “Tehran welcomes basic and fair changes in U.S. policies and conducts.” He added what is obviously his idea of helpful advice: ”I hope you will prefer real public interests and justice to the never-ending demands of a selfish minority and seize the opportunity to serve people so that you will be remembered with high esteem.”
Despite this message, the conservative hard-line camp in Iran is worried about the overwhelming enthusiasm and support for the U.S. that Obama’s election has created around the world. A popular American president who talks about peace and wants to negotiate with Iran would take away their justification for leading the anti-American front in the Middle East. The most intriguing reaction to Obama’s victory in Iran was reported by the Saudi-based Al Arabiya. In a report, this news outlet said that some Iranian officials had interpreted Obama’s election as as a sign of the arrival of the Mahdi. This is because Obama’s first name, Barack, means blessing and his second name, Hussein, is the name of the third Shiite imam who Iranians revere. The Saudi channel refused to reveal the name of the Iranian website on which its reports were based. Note EU-Digest: According to the Muslims al-Mahdi is "the rightly-guided one" who, based on Islamic Hadiths (traditions), will come before the end of time to make the entire world Muslim. Over the last 1400 years numerous claimants to the mantle of the Mahdi have arisen in both Shi`i and Sunni circles.
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