Within days of the controversial leader’s first posting, Technorati ( www.technorati.com ), the San Francisco-based blog search engine, had ranked it as the 3,722nd most-popular blog among the estimated 50 million in cyberspace. It is also, according to Technorati marketing director Derek Gordon, the first ever by a sitting head of state.
The bigger question, perhaps, is just who the Iranian leader is targeting for his musings. The site is clearly designed for an international audience. Published in Farsi, it’s also available in Arabic and English, with a French translation on its way. And with the approach of the Aug. 31 deadline for the possible imposition of sanctions against Tehran if the mullahs don’t abandon their uranium-enrichment plans , it’s hardly a surprise that Ahmadinejad wants a PR campaign to muster global sympathy.
There’s also the fact that with a state-controlled media, Ahmadinejad has the means to get his message to the masses by more conventional means. A blog, however, with its connotations of hipness and modernity provides the Iranian with a counterintuitive way to deliver his message—and target a new domestic audience: youth. “He is trying to talk to people who ignore him through other media like TV or newspapers,” says Mani Monajjemi, a Tehran-based blogger. Another blogger in Tehran, who requested anonymity because authorities closed down her site for six months, says Ahmadinejad is struggling to find a way to show that he cares about the way young people live.
Will young Iranians reciprocate his interest? The centerpiece of Ahmadinejad’s posting is a long essay sharing his rags-to-religious-and-political-awakening story, boasting of his roots in rural poverty and explaining how the efforts of the corrupt shah and his “foreign masters” to guide Iran “into western civilization slavishly” helped form his friendship with Ayatollah Khomeini, whose later exile proved “intolerable.” By his account, Ahmadinejad was a brilliant student, a devout activist and a member of the elite Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq War. The Islamic revolution of 1979, fueled by the “divine weapon of faith,” led to a flourishing of such values as “eagerness and happiness to do good”—including forcing the “Great Satan USA” out of Iran.
Hossein Derakhshan, a prominent Iranian blogger now based in Toronto, reckons that most Iranians will find Ahmadinejad’s blog “quite trendy and cool.” The blog’s style, however, differs from the prevailing canons of online edge. Its few links lead to official sites touting similar positions in more traditionally dense bureaucratic language. Links to Web sites with opposing views are noticeably absent. So are the bite-size posts that appeal to rushed readers. Nor will Ahmadinejad’s epistle win any awards for pithiness—something he acknowledges in his signoff by promising to make future posts “shorter and simpler.” “With hope in God,” he adds, according to the English translation, “I intend to wholeheartedly complete my talk in future with allotted fifteen minutes.”
Freedom of expression is also somewhat circumscribed. While readers do have a chance to submit comments, a pop-up window promptly informs them that their remarks will be reviewed before posting.
Ahmadinejad does, however, make use of a staple of the blog world: the click poll. “Do you think that the US and Israeli intention and goal by attacking Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another world war?” he asks. It may be a loaded question, but readers seem to enjoy the interactivity: by Wednesday, more than 215,000 people had responded: 51 percent said no.
For Derakhshan, these are good signs. When the Iranian returned to his native country last year to blog on the presidential election that led to Ahmadinejad’s victory, Derakhshan was detained and interrogated by the Ministry of Intelligence, forced to publicly recant entries and expelled from the country. Now that Ahmadinejad has entered the blogosphere, Derakhshan hopes that Tehran is less likely to shut down providers’ blog servers—and just might cut fellow bloggers some slack.
