Ma Mitavanim

The Farsi phrase for “we can” – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s (curiously familiar) re-election slogan.

Despite responding skeptically to President Obama’s “hand of friendship,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to have appropriated The One’s campaign, as Robert Tait reported in The Guardian:

Obama’s signature campaign slogan, Yes We Can, has been replicated by the Iranian president in a promotional video issued for Iran’s presidential poll on 12 June, when Ahmadinejad is seeking re-election.

The video features a cover picture of Ahmadinejad wearing his trademark white jacket and pointing to the Farsi phrase Ma Mitavanim (We Can) on a blackboard. The film is aimed at students and capitalises on his former status as a university lecturer.

The Telegraph’s Con Coughlin called Ahmadinejad’s emulation a “back-handed compliment.”

Meanwhile, Radio Free Europe reported that Ahmadinejad’s challenger, Mehdi Karrubi, had adopted as his campaign slogan the (equally Obamaesque) word “change”:

Karrubi said that he took the slogan from a verse in the Koran which says that the fate of a nation does not change unless the people decide to change it.