And now a story of how a Presidential advisor, trying to lecture an interviewer, slipped up in an on-the-record comment....
Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist living in exile in Britain, took a chance this week and called Ali Akbar Javanfekr, an advisor to President Ahmadinejad and managing director at Iran's State news agency IRNA.
Alinejad was hoping to get a comment about the US allegations of Iranian involvement in a plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador to Washington. Javanfekr would not co-operate: "If I have any views, I will share them with Iranian media inside the country and not speak with Iranian journalists who are against the Islamic Republic and its government and who have left the country to seek refuge in other countries with anti-revolutionary forces."
That might have been the end of the interview, except Javanfekr --- still "on the record", as he had not told Alinejad otherwise --- decided to lecture the journalist: had she stayed in Iran, she would have been jailed along with her colleagues, received a sentence to be lashed for insulting the President. While he was on the theme, he denied that student activist Payman Aref, who received 74 lashes last week, was punished because Ahmadinejad lodged a complaint against him.
Alinejad saw an opening, noting that the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, had said Ahmadinejad had personally complained against 10 individuals: "So, you both can't be right, someone is lying. Either Larijani or Ahmadinejad."
Javanfekr retreated: Ahmadinejad had lodged complaints against "some of the people in powerful positions who had insulted him", but not against Peyman Aref.
Complaints against "some of the people in powerful positions"? With that sentence, Javanfekr had given Alinejad the admission of the battle within the Iranian establishment and opened up this question: how high up do the Presidential complaints go?
The episode has not gone unnoticed in Iran. The conservative Jahan News criticised Javanfekr for "giving an interview to Masih Alinejad". And the headline? "Javanfekr has said that Ahmadinejad has made official complaints against some politicians in power."