Kaveh Barzegar

Following a long tradition, minutes after the beginning of the new Iranian calendar on ‎March 20th, 2008, the President of the Islamic Republic delivered a message to the ‎Iranian nation and christened the year as “The Year of Invention and Bloom.” The ‎message was broadcast simultaneously on all TV and state radio stations.‎

Ayatollah Khamenei said the New Year was a special one because it concluded the third ‎decade of the victory of the Islamic revolution in 1979 while beginning the fourth. ‎

As a departure from his norm, President Ahmadinejad acknowledged the existence of ‎inflation in the year that ended on March 19th, as he delivered his New Year address to ‎the masses, which he said “had created difficulties for many of our fellow Iranians.” He ‎attributes the problem to “pressures stemming from massive economic breakthroughs, ‎unprecedented low depression, unprecedented high prices around the world, and ‎unethical behavior of some of our friends and misbehavior of some domestic ‎individuals.” He also promised the implementation of a project that would result in a ‎‎“massive economic breakthrough,” and event that even the state run media have till today ‎not mentioned in any form.‎

Ayatollah Khamenei’s Nowruz (Iranian New Year) message also mentioned “the ‎commencing of a fresh Majlis and the work of the service-providing government” which ‎he also praised as “energetic and unrelenting.” He predicted that the cooperation of these ‎two branches of the government would lead to “colossal work,” and added, “We cannot ‎move gradually and in a normal fashion, but must strive with twofold efforts, more ‎seriously and with full speed, while moving forward in a calculated, orderly and ‎disciplined fashion in the domestic and complex international spheres, and utilize all ‎available possibilities to attain great accomplishments.”‎

Similarly Ahmadinejad claimed that the year that ended two weeks ago had brought ‎repeated achievements that also brought pride, hope and astonishing development in the ‎fields of politics, economics, science and culture. He claimed that the “year had brought ‎about twice as much work, construction and development as previous years. Large ‎industrial, development, scientific, research, economic, cultural and job-creating projects ‎had been implemented.”‎

Following ayatollah Khamenei’s labeling of the year, the semi-official news agencies of ‎Mehr, Fars, and ISNA published interviews with government officials and political ‎activists on the subject. Those opposing the administration channeled their criticism at ‎the government and called on it to change its policies. At the other end of the political ‎spectrum, the proponents of the administration tried to demonstrate that the scientific ‎accomplishments and those relating to the nuclear issue were reflections of the ‎administrations innovations and bloom and portray that the new name given to the year ‎was in fact an extension of the direction that the government had been following for the ‎past 2 years.‎

Speaking at Tehran’s Friday prayers, Imami Kashani, a member of the powerful ‎appointed Guardians Council (which vets candidates to all national elections) pointed to ‎parts of the new year message delivered by the leader of the Islamic regime in which he ‎had said that in pursuing economic progress Western models should not be seen as the ‎sole examples and said that Iranians had to engage in innovation, adding, “Models must ‎be based on Islamic principles, while the Majlis and the government must work together ‎and come up with solutions” and “untie the knots through wisdom, thought and ‎consultation with each other.”‎