Iran’s newly elected president (not pictured above in his youthful terrorist abduction days), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is purging government institutions, acting like a dictator and bringing accusations by some that he is “undertaking a coup d’état.”

This is the same guy who has spoken of “wiping Israel off the map” and appears to be taking Iran on an isolationist path–primarily because there simply aren’t that many countries as extreme as he is.

Since Iran is a theocracy and not a democracy, in theory his actions can be reined in by the Islamic clerical establishment who control the country. So far they haven’t done much since their skill set is in reigning in reformers, not left-wing lunatics. This is new territory for them.

The stock market has fallen 30% since the new president took office, and there is growing criticism of his failure to deliver on promises to create jobs and raise living standards.

Did the Iranian populace really think that an Islamic extremist would do a good job with the economy? Will a man who creates international turmoil with his extremism really do a good job opening up trade and liberalizing markets? As my dad would say to the voters of Iran, “what in the world were you thinking?”

And how about this? “Independent Sources Says ????????? ???? ?? ? ????? ????

Update: We screwed up and ran the wrong picture, the person above who we identified as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in fact someone else. No wait, let me word it like CBS would: “We are unable to verify the veracity of the photograph above at this time…” This error was pointed out by one of our commenters who said:

“I do not like this animal either but he is not the guy in the picture. The CIA has determined that the guy in the photo was someone later executed by the regieme. Just because we do not like someone, we should not pin everything on him!”

We would like to issue an apology to the dead guy for mixing him up with an extremist theocratic ruler. May his memory not be tarnished by our sloppy reporting.

Next thing you know someone is going to tell us that this isn’t really supermodel Michelle Lee.

technorati: iran

hat tip: Ace of Spades

trackbacks: Political Teen Tigerhawk (on Iran’s nuke program) media lies

This entry was posted on Friday, November 18th, 2005 at 10:53 am by Insider and is filed under Big Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.