Iran: How "Ahmadinejad v. Paul the Octopus" Became a Global Showdown

It was only a sentence in a very, very long speech.

After a rather slow start --- "if one really makes a big success of it, the middle age will be the period in which what was achieved in youth would be consolidated" --- President Ahmadinejad's talk at the closing ceremony of the Iranian Youth Festival in Tehran last Friday was full of juicy soundbites.

There was the denunciation of a US-led plot "to carry out a military invasion of one or two countries in the Middle East, which are our friends, with the help of...disgraced Israelis". There was the portrayal of a deceitful Russian President Dmitry Medvedev offering support by "perform[ing] at a US show". There was the declaration, "The Iranian nation will crush hundreds of America's propagandist plays with its will and unity."

Little wonder, then, that this sentence initially slipped by with little notice: "Recently in the World Championship [football's World Cup] you saw that those who proclaim to have reached the peaks of history wanted to manipulate people's minds through superstition, an octopus, fortune-telling and such things."

Enter the magic of the German newspaper Bild. On Monday, their intrepid reporters turned Ahmadinejad's aside into the Main Event: "He incites against Israel, against the US and the West in general --- but now the crazy Iranian dictator is going after Paul the Octopus!...For Ahmadinejad, Paul is a symbol of the propaganda and superstitions of the West."

Paul the Octopus, for those who have been away from Planet Earth this summer, was the unexpected star of the 2010 World Cup, picking the winner in all of Germany's matches (including, at great risk to his life, Spain's defeat of the Germans in the semi-final) and then calling the Spanish victory over Holland in the final. He had also allegedly intervened in Iranian politics, calling an ultimate win for opposition figure Mir Hossein Mousavi over the Supreme Leader.

Forget minor events like Ayatollah Khamenei's "I am the Rule of the Prophet" fatwa or the manoeuvres against the Iranian President. Paul v. Mahmoud was the story, sometimes the only story --- once you looked past mythical or real nuclear weapons, of course --- on Iran.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Daily Telegraph of London, which has a penchant for Wacky Ahmadinejad stories (see their superlative "Mahmoud is a Jew" effort), proclaimed, "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader, says Paul the Octopus, the sea creature that correctly predicted the outcome of World Cup games, is a symbol of all that is wrong with the western world." (There was no mention of Bild for its investigative coup.) And by Wednesday, British tabloids such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, as well as the broadsheet The Guardian, were reprinting the story with minor changes in wording (although The Guardian deserves a bonus point for the headline, "West Spreads Evil Tentacles into Iran").

Time magazine picked up the tale --- "[Paul] just calls it like it is — or will be". Rory Fitzgerald at The Huffington Post attempted satire by penning Paul's response: "He...said that he had never before seen such a lack of a sense of humor in a human being, despite the fact that he lives in Germany." Fox News posted the item in its "Science and Technology" section. IsraelPolitik, "The Political Blog of the State of Israel", jumped in, "If Paul the Octopus is on Ahmadinejad’s 'hitlist', no one is safe."

By Wednesday afternoon, there were so many reprints or minor variations of the tale --- all without noting the original Ahmadinejad sentence, all without crediting Bild --- that The Los Angeles Times (which credited The Daily Telegraph) was publishing a round-up.

Is there a moral here? Probably not. It's just a tale of how the world works, when the fatwa of a Supreme Leader --- a Supreme Leader who may be in political trouble --- just can't match up to the scenario of Bad Guy Politician v. Eight-Legged Psychic.

And you don't even need Paul --- or Mahmoud for that matter --- to tell you that.

[Thanks to Borzou Daragahi for sending me a full copy of Ahmadinejad's speech]

The Latest from Iran (28 July): A Presidential Target?

2040 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Author and journalist Yahya Samadi has been arrested in Sanandaj in Kurdistan.

2030 GMT: International Front Update. The US has offered a cautious welcome to Iran's approach for resumed discussions on uranium enrichment (see 1630 GMT). State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley said, "We obviously are fully prepared to follow up with Iran on specifics regarding our initial proposal involving the Tehran research reactor....[We are interested in] trying to fully understand the nature of Iran's nuclear program. We hope to have the same kind of meeting coming up in the coming weeks that we had last October."

NEW Iran Analysis: The Hardliners Take on Ahmadinejad
Latest Iran Video: Ahmadinejad on Afghanistan, Sanctions, & the US (26 July)
Iran Document: Mousavi on Governing and Mis-Governing, Now and in the 1980s (26 July)
Iran Analysis: Interpreting Khamenei’s “Re-Appearing” Fatwa (Verde)
The Latest from Iran (27 July): Regime Wavering?

2007 GMT: Today's All-is-Well Alert. The President of Islamic Azad University, (IAU) Abdollah Jasbi, has declared, "In its fourth decade [of its existence, i.e., 2020]…the Islamic Azad University will become the greatest and most respected university in the world and competing with renowned universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and MIT has been placed on its agenda."

There is no quote from Jasbi on the recent attempt by pro-Ahmadinejad forces to take control of the University, including moves that could have removed Jasbi from his post.

2004 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. HRANA carries a report from political prisoner Saeed Masouri on conditions in Rajai-Shahr Prison.

2000 GMT: The Oil Squeeze. Deutsche Welle --- following earlier reports that Iran has received only three shipments of gasoline this month, rather than the normal 11-13, claims that the country is facing serious shortages.

1630 GMT: International Front. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says Iran, in a message sent on Sunday, has given an assurance that it will stop enriching uranium to 20 percent purity if other countries agree to a fuel swap.

Crucially, however, it is not clear if Iran has accepted that the uranium swap can take place outside its borders.

1615 GMT: MediaWatch --- One Non-Story, One Nearly-New Story. It's always interesting to see which tales break through into the "mainstream" media outside Iran.

One hot story may actually be a jumped-up urban myth. The Bild tabolid in Germany, not always known for scrupulous adherence to facts, put out the claim on Monday that President Ahmadinejad had denounced Paul the Psychic Octopus as a tool of Western imperialism. More than 48 hours later, the story --- almost always without referencing Bild as the source --- is now embedded in outlets from The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian of London to Time magazine to the Los Angeles Times.

Then there are Ahmadinejad's babies. Months ago, the President proposed a payment of about $1000 for every new child, with subsequent support payments until the boy or girl reached 18. That announcement escaped notice outside Iran. However, when Ahmadinejad restated the idea Tuesday, it was transformed into the news that he had "inaugurated a new policy" by the Associated Press, becoming the Number 1 Iran story in places like The New York Times.

1610 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Radio Zamaneh has more on the reported move of 10 political prisoners, including student activist Abdollah Momeni, journalist Bahman Ahmadi Amoui, and Ahmad Karimi, to solitary confinement (see 0840 GMT). The report claims that the 10 are being punished for protesting against the ill treatment of detainees and their families by guards.

1210 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. An appellate court has upheld the 9 1/2-year sentence of student and women’s rights activist Bahareh Hedayat. Hedayat will also serve two years that had been suspended from a 2006 arrest.

Mostafa Kazzazi, the publisher of the banned Seda-ye Edalat (Voice of Justice), has been sentenced to 11 months in jail for propaganda against the establishment, defaming the Islamic republic, and encouraging people to act against security.

Seda-ye Edalat was shut down in July 2009 for "insulting" Ayatollah Khomeini.

1145 GMT: Today's Conspiracy Theory. Back from an academic break to find that Iranian leaders are holding a competition for Biggest, Baddest Threat of the Day.

As good as President Ahmadinejad is in this sport, he only gets the runner-up spot for his declaration in Assalouyeh in southern Iran on Wednesday. His assertion that "Iran's efforts to proceed with giant national oil, gas and petroleum projects by [Iranian] experts have cut the dependence bonds with other economic powers and multinational companies" may be morale-boosting --- if somewhat oblivious to current realities --- but does not really fit in category of Threat.

Your winner? Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, is the runaway champion with this tale:

I have acquired documents showing that the Americans paid one billion dollars to leaders of sedition through Saudi individuals who are currently the US agents in regional countries. These Saudis, who spoke on behalf of the US, told the opposition figures that if you can overthrow the Islamic establishment, we would pay another 50 billion dollars.

The opposition leaders staged riots with the help of the US and they were confident that the Islamic Revolution will fall with the assistance of the US because it is a soft war which causes people to break away from the Islamic system.

We look forward to seeing those documents and perhaps also the made-for-TV movie for IRIB 1.

0840 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Rah-e-Sabz reports that Abdollah Momeni and other political prisoners are being moved out of Evin Prison's Ward 350 into solitary confinement. Earlier, it was reported that phones in the ward had been cut off this week.

0835 GMT: Moving Out. A reader folllows up our item on the Cultural Heritage Organization protest at transfer of offices outside Tehran: according to Jam-e-Jam, 40% of civil servants should be leaving the capital within the next month.

0740 GMT: We begin this morning with an analysis of tensions within the Iranian system, "The Hardliners Take on Ahmadinejad".

Meanwhile....

Tough Guy Larijani

Partly for his campaign to establish his leadership credentials, partly to challenge Mir Hossein Mousavi's latest statement, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has continued to throw rhetoric at the US. Speaking in Kermanshah on Tuesday, he said:

The United States still seeks to break the Iranian nation's will. The more sanctions they issue against us, the stronger the Iranian nation's will becomes....US President Barack Obama cannot stretch his hands to the Iranian nation while the US Congress adopts moves against Iran....This imposed war [with Iraq from 1980-1988] was not Iraq's war with Iran, but it was a war of most big powers which support Iraq.

The Heritage Protest

The employees of the Cultural Heritage Organization have protested at Tehran's Mehrabad airport, objecting to their transfer to offices outside the capital.

The transfer order is part of the Ahmadinejad Government's plan to reduce the population in Tehran. The 700 employees of the CHO are amongst the first government employees to receive notices.

Fars News has recently published the name of 114 public companies who have been ordered to move from Tehran.