I don’t think many people are aware of this incident yet, so I feel I shall do the world some justice and blog about it: Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of the (Islamic Republic of) Iran has sent a letter to Mr George Bush. I guess political figures do remain in touch a fair bit, at least the allied ones, and given the recent escalating tensions between the USA, some of it’s allies and Iran this news does come at a slight surprise, however after reading the letter I feel it was perhaps the best course of action.
So reading it… I highly recommend anyone and everyone to read the letter in full. I think it offers possibilites of greater understanding of Iran and it’s currently elected leader as well as some of the political, social and economic problems that we are facing today. You might think, and I generally agree with this first notion, that we’re all, well most of us, are aware of at least most of these problems which I quickly assigned into those three broad categories in the last sentence and that after having discussed, argued, thought and heard all about them that reading a several thousand-word letter addressed to Bush would not make much of a difference. I beg to differ and thus suggest you take 20 minutes off sometime today and read what Mr Ahmadinejad had to say to Mr Bush.
Personally I think that anyone who rejects such a letter as a whole (I feel a few specific religious sections towards the end may be arguable), especially after being the current representing president of a country involved at the head of some rather poor relations1. should reconsider his or her position in society, beginning with their place in office.
I don’t think this has gotten enough media coverage yet. It was touched on slightly here on the news and radio media outlets and sadly there has been even less of a follow up on Bush’s response, which is a shame. Actually, taking a step backwards, I was not aware that the letter had been made public until I found dad’s link to the English wikinews.org page today2.. I suppose it has to do with the dismissal by Bush. Admadinejad kept the letter private and once it was dismissed he probably felt some good could come about if everyone could freely read it.
I’ve been tinkering with the idea of starting another journal on a subdomain for articles and such things I write. They don’t really fit too well within my personal blog, however much I want them to and it would, I think, make it easier for readers to find what they want they are actually interested in reading by just aggregating one of the feeds, once the other site is online, if the idea goes ahead.
That’s all for now. More later.
Endnotes
1. US-Iran relations have been very poor ever since the 1979 revolution and hostage taking in the US embassy in Tehran. For an insight into the issues, I recommend a look a the Wikipedia page on it: United States-Iran relations.
2. Thanks for that. 
One comment
I’ve read a Danish translation of his letter as well in a newspaper and he’s a sympathetic guy. It’s just sad that it’s not up to him, as the popularly elected president, to actually control Iran politically - that’s the job of the high priests.
I am not in doubt that the nuclear activites of Iran will eventually lead to nuclear weapons. Iran will not give up its program, and had the country not been controlled by religious fanatics I wouldn’t have had a problem with that; I would have said “Sure, of course you can use nuclear power if you wish”. But it just so happens to be controlled by religious fanatics and that is not exactly a good thing in this case.
I think the real fear is Iran supplying Islamicist terrorists with nuclear weapons, not Iran building a stockpile of weapons for a future nuclear war.