Many of Persian speaking writers, journalist, activists and Iranians in diaspora are receiving emails recently from a guy dreaming to be the next president of Iran.
Most of his emails and his campaign emails are getting into spam boxes or immediately deleted by users. Why is that?
Hooshang Amirahmadi, who is known among Iranian-Americans as a lobbyist for US oil companies with the interest of working in Iran, has launched a presidential campaign thousands of miles away from the country he wants to lead.
Amirahmadi, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University, declared his candidacy for the Iranian presidency a few months earlier and then started fundraising jaunts from his hometown in New Jersey to California to UAE in the shadow of doubt about his legitimacy for running as a president according to the rules applied in Iran.
Some are saying that he is ignorant to the rules and the filtering system while others believe that he is underestimating the scrutiny and complexity of the system. No wonder, Amirahmadi, 65, spent two third of his life in States, and consider the red carpets spread for him in Iran as perpetual. But with all his efforts and knowledge it would be very ridicules to call him an inexperienced guy running a meaningless campaign. So what is behind the scene?
The founder of the nonprofit American Iranian Council is not that naïve not knowing that candidates for election must be approved by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's Guardian Council ahead of the election and with his American citizenship, along with his appearance wearing ties and shaving his beards his chance is as narrow as a hair line.
Talking to media Amirahmadi shows himself very confident as saying he will be approved mentioning that he had spoken with members of the council about his presidency, but it is clear that when it comes to reality neither hardliners nor conservatives or even reformist are not willing to even consider him as a member of their campaign.
On the other hand, let's just assume that he qualified for election, if he wants to run as an independent candidate how he will introduce himself to Iranians who never had the honor even hearing his name even once in their life. With state run media in Iran his chance of introducing is close to zero.
It is proven that with money you can every thing in Iran as a Persian proverb says give money and sit on Shahs mustache and play your flute but with the money he earned for his campaign he can get nowhere. According to his reports Amirahmadi has raised between $55,000 and $60,000 in the United States and about $80,000 in Dubai, which will be only enough for couple of billboards in Tehran and maybe for a short radio ad. With this amount of money his candidacy is more a joke than anything else.
And just a question with these overwhelming sanction who he is seeing himself transferring that money to Iran for his campaign?