[ media ] Earlier this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first vice president, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, was asked whether the government had made any progress in apprehending those in Iran whom the administration had claimed were behind the devaluation of the national currency.
He said no.
The next day, however, Rahimi announced to the media that the man responsible for the rising price of the U.S. dollar had been arrested. He revealed his name: Jamshid Besmellah.
This was a very odd revelation. In the Islamic Republic, criminals are usually assigned initials, and not publicly named, even after conviction. Besides, Besmellah is not a proper last name or nickname. But Rahimi claimed that "Jamshid," who used to sit on a plastic stool in the money exchange district, was the one who set the exchange rate for the dollar every day.
No one bought the story, not least because the dollar failed to go down after his reported arrest.
20:30, a political program dedicated to upholding the values of the Islamic Revolution (and distorting the truth) dispatched one of its reporters to the currency exchange district. Up and down Manouchehri Street, he found virtually no trace left by Jamshid Besmellah. Most of those he interviewed said they had never heard of such a person.
One man stated, "You say Jamshid, I say sword," meaning he fears the repercussions of speaking. One man alone claimed to have known this Jamshid, whom he described as tall, a user of hair gel, and basically "a nobody."
"They're just blowing it way out of proportion," he said.
Airing such a report on national television openly discredits the Ahmadinejad administration, and reaffirms that those who hold real power in the Islamic Republic have little use now for the president.
Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau