Israel Matzav

Watching Ahmadinejad from Iran

Out of all the coverage of Ahmadinejad's visit to New York, I found this short bit on how the story is being covered in Iran most interesting.

PJM’s Ardeshir Arian reports the following from inside Iran regarding Ahmadinejad’s speech today:

1) VOA Television nightly services on HotBird and TeleStar 12 satellites were disrupted in Tehran for about 20 minutes, as soon as he was to be introduced at Columbia university’s podium. Iranian citizens did not hear the criticism of Ahmadinejad by Columbia President Bollinger. The way the Islamic Republic does this is to scramble the signals of these satellites locally, using stationary and mobile microwave dishes.

2) It has been rumored from inside Iran that one of the conditions for Iranian-American Haleh Esfandiari’s release from Evin Prison was for Ahmadinejad to give his speech at Columbia University and to visit Ground Zero. Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia was canceled last year.

Yesterday, I blogged a story that said that Ahmadinejad's appearance in New York was a quid pro quo for the release of Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh on bail. It's unlikely we will never know the truth on that one.

But the first item is the more interesting one. I suppose that if Iranians heard what the West thinks of their President, there might be some more gas stations burning.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:07 PM