The first time I heard the name Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in the summer of 2005, about a week before he was elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We were driving through the crowded streets of downtown Shiraz when my friend Hossein, a leading human rights attorney in the city, told me of his concerns about the elections that were soon to take place.

What worried Hossein was that voters would be choosing between the infamously corrupt, if pragmatic, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and the relatively unknown Ahmadinejad, who had successfully portrayed himself as a populist willing to fight for Iran’s middle class—and, as most Iranians were unaware of his more right-wing history, he would be assured victory.

As we now know, Hossein was correct. So little did people know about Ahmadinejad, in fact, that even my cousin, a member of my orthodox Jewish family (there’s a significant Jewish population in Iran, in case you didn’t know), cast a vote him.
Although Hossein has certainly experienced setbacks due to the administration’s domestic policies, he and many Iranian progressives are much more concerned that the increasingly aggressive rhetoric coming out of the Bush administration will culminate in the utter destruction of their nation, à la the invasion of Iraq. In fact, Iranians who hope to reform their government have frequently lamented attempts by the U.S. to “support their efforts.” This is because the more money Congress earmarks for Iranian resistance and regime change, the more these people’s hard work is undermined, as Iranian politicians dismiss the protests and actions as part of an American plot to overthrow the Iranian government (an excuse that resonates with previous American actions in the country, such as the CIA-led ousting of the democratically elected Iranian prime minister in 1953).

Thus, as an Iranian-American of Jewish heritage and a progressive political disposition, I’ve found myself in something of a tricky position for today’s event. On the one hand, it’s a great opportunity to denounce his right-wing policies and demand answers regarding his frequently cited comments about Israel. On the other hand, however, I worry that rallying to the anti-Ahmadinejad drum beat will provide fodder for the increasingly vehement propaganda campaign that seeks to vilify Iran as a significant danger to the U.S.—and thus one requiring a pre-emptive military attack.

Although we must all make our own decisions about what image we want to send the world today (and trust me, the world will be watching), I strongly urge Columbia students to at least consider using the opportunity to take a more nuanced stance vis-à-vis the Ahmadinejad visit—one in which we not only show our disapproval of the president’s statements and policies, but further insist that we will not be party to those who wish to rally American fear and hatred, thus paving the way for an entirely new crisis in the Middle East (and in which the human death toll would likely surpass that of the more than 655,000 Iraqis who have died as a result of the American-led invasion of Iraq).

If we sincerely hope to extricate ourselves from the quagmire of Iraq (and the war in Afghanistan), we should use today to call upon Ahmadinejad as well as our own country’s leaders to recognize our common interests and begin working together to solve the region’s problems immediately.

Sheena Shirakhon is a Columbia College senior.