iran.jpgApparently, the Islamic Republic is still living in the era when you could deny what you had said formerly.

The story began with a sentence in the AP’s translation of Ahmadinejad’s speech in Ardakan, Yazd Province. AP carried the sentence “If all of you gather and also invite your ancestors from hell, you will not be able to stop the Iranian nation.” Although, these words quite perfectly match Ahmadinejad’s vocabulary, when I failed to find the sentence in the official Persian sources, I contacted the AP and asked them what their source had been. They responded, rather quickly, that the sentence does exist in the text published by IRNA, the Islamic Republic News Agency. I did a more extensive research on it and again failed to find any trace of the sentence anywhere, except for a Persian blog which did not indicate its source. So I asked the AP to send me their link.

Now, thanks to my friend Shimbalkhan, a rather meaningless name in Persian, we actually found out that the official newspaper of the government, Iran, published the speech and it did include the rather rude sentence. Thus, to this point, the conclusion is that AP did not make any mistake in the translation and that the IR, rather naively, tried to cover up Ahmadinejad’s remarks. It is interesting to know that the sentence is in fact printed on the front page (pdf).

Guys, this is the year 2007. I guess Khomeini and others did manage to change their words and deny what they had said, but, fortunately, your words are archived forever.