Touching down in Tehran
Posted: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 12:17 PM
Filed Under:
Tehran, Iran
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
The front page of Wednesday’s "Iran News" carries a picture of a smiling President Ahmadinejad with two young children, while an article alongside claims Iran is close to industrial-scale enrichment of uranium, and there’ll be no going back. The "Tehran Times" has Iran ready to strike the U.S. "anywhere" if attacked. Pretty ominous stuff.
But turn a few pages and there’s a rather different take on the Great Satan - a rundown on the Oscars with a large photograph of a smiling Al Gore, Oscar in hand. There’s also a piece about David Beckham’s likely impact on U.S. soccer, together with an interview with the former captain of the Iranian national team, who is now coaching a team in Los Angeles, and paints a glowing picture of his time in the States. "I see the potential and talent here," he says.
It’s a rather intriguing picture, as indeed it has been since I stepped off the aging Mahan Air Airbus at Imam Khomeini International Airport early this morning after the eight-hour flight from Bangkok.
Still looking for more for the ‘little man’
My taxi driver for the 90-minute ride into Tehran sported the regulation beard, but soon announced that in his view Ahmadinejad is a "sheep"-- not regarded here as the brightest of animals. We passed the massive Imam Khomeini mosque, where the late founder of the Islamic Republic is entombed, still floodlit at two o’clock in the morning.
"If Khomeini knew how much has been wasted on that place, he’d turn in his grave," announced my driver, who was clearly not impressed with Iran’s new president, who was elected on a populist platform of more widely distributing Iran’s oil money and bringing more financial relief to the "little man."
My driver regarded himself as one of those men, and wasn’t impressed with the results. He was skeptical of all the anti-American rhetoric that Ahmadinejad has been dishing out in recent days on a tour of northern Iran.
I also learned that the Imam’s mosque has become a late-night rendezvous for young men and women hoping to meet, talk and exchange telephone numbers, never an easy task in the Islamic Republic. The mosque may appear an odd place to do that, but the youngsters reckon it’s relatively safe from the prying eyes of the religious police.
My hotel, the Esteghlal (Independence) used to be the Hilton, though the big Western chains long ago abandoned Tehran. On arrival, my taxi driver cracked a joke, in Farsi, about Ahmadinejad, which made the doorman chuckle -- clearly another of those "little men."
The hotel looks over the snow-capped mountains to the north of the city. It’s a dramatic sight at first light, before Tehran’s notorious smog descends. Al Gore might have a thing or two to say about that, and if today’s newspapers are anything to go by, his words might well attract as much interest among the young and the "little men" as the fiery rhetoric from Ahmadinejad.
NBC News’ Ian Williams is usually based in Bangkok, Thailand, and is on assignment in Iran. Stay tuned for more of his blogs from Tehran, as well as reports on NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams.
