Iran’s Ahmadinejad Wants to Come Back
But will his exorcist let him?
By Robert Spencer
Those of us who are of a certain age will remember Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As president of Iran from 2005 to 2013 (one of the only presidents of the Islamic Republic of Iran not to be a Muslim cleric), he shocked and enraged the world by setting the Islamic Republic on a path to acquiring nuclear weapons and repeatedly predicting the imminent demise of the state of Israel.
As it turns out, Mad Mahmoud was ahead of his time: nowadays, he’d be endorsing ten-billion-dollar checks from Old Joe Biden and getting praise from the UN and the international media for his support of the Palestinians. And sure enough, he wants to come back. But his exorcist doesn’t think that would be a good idea.
Yes, you read that right. Iran International reported Sunday that an Iranian cleric named Abbas Amirifar, whom it identified matter-of-factly as “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s former exorcist,” has revealed that the gadfly former president’s behind-closed-doors campaign is in full swing, with Ahmadinejad holding regular “secret meetings with his new team in preparation for the 2025 presidential election.”
Iran International does not, however, explain why exactly Ahmadinejad has, or had, an exorcist at all, or what exactly Amirifar did for the former president, other than noting laconically that he was “tasked with protecting him from evil spirits.” Come to think of it, equipping the president with someone to protect him from evil spirits trying to take over his soul and influence public policy is a terrific idea. Maybe if Old Joe Biden had a federal exorcist, we wouldn’t be in this fix, but the poor exorcist might die from exhaustion or quit in frustration over being saddled with such a herculean task.
Nevertheless, questions multiply. Was Ahmadinejad possessed by evil spirits or at the very least harried by them when he urged Iranians to “raise the flag of martyrs over the White House,” that is, kill Americans and be killed in the process, in accord with the Qur’an’s promise of paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah (9:111)? Was Old Scratch whispering in his ear when, in a deft encapsulation of the leftist/Islamic alliance, Ahmadinejad confidently predicted that the Twelfth Imam, Shi’ite Islam’s savior figure, would return in the company of none other than the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez?
What about when he called for the erasure of Israel from the map or when he declared at the UN that there were no homosexuals in Iran (which may have been close to true, since he had had so many of them put to death)?
These kinds of statements didn’t seem to trouble Amirifar. He characterized Ahmadinejad as a “modest and popular president.” The exorcist did not, however, support his former client’s return to the job. Ahmadinejad, Amirifar said, has opposed Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, although he didn’t explain how. “Now,” he added, “as far as the regime is concerned Ahmadinejad is finished. He has changed beyond recognition and supports dancers and homosexuals.”
Could Ahmadinejad really be becoming more secular? Does he really now support rights for the homosexuals whose very existence he denied back when he was president? In Iran today, where the people are so thoroughly disgusted after forty-plus years of Islamic rule that only 40% think of themselves as Muslims today, that could make Ahmadinejad quite popular.
However the voting turns out, however, there is only one person who really chooses the president in Iran, and that is Khamenei. It seems unlikely that the pious ayatollah will be warm to the idea of a president whose own exorcist won’t give him a clean bill of health, certify him as demon-free, and recommend him for the office. If a man’s exorcist won’t stand behind him, who will?
What’s more, just imagine what damage a demon-ridden president might do in America. Why, he might betray allies for electoral gain, open the border to millions of unvetted illegals, treat his opposition like criminals, prosecute his principal opponent on bogus grounds, and embrace a radical and divisive social agenda that has the nation closer to civil war than it has been since 1860. Such a presidency could be a disaster from which the nation will never recover. Amirifar, a patriotic man, doesn’t want to see such a fate befall his own country. Would you?