How is it that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who shows an insatiable desire to appear in front ‎of foreign cameras and answer foreign journalists, refrains from answering simple ‎questions from students in his own country? Why does he postpone confronting people ‎who are gradually getting angry from his policies of the past 2 years? ‎

How is it that he is willing to listen to harsh insults and pointed questions presented at ‎Columbia University in New York, in a program watched live by millions of people, but ‎he evades answering questions from of a few hundred students at home? ‎

If the president’s public relations and media advisors were aware of media relations in ‎today’s world, they would have advised him not only to allow students to voice their ‎questions, but also to respond to them by using his amazing recollection of data and ‎numbers, especially given his expertise in providing a rosy account of any situation. ‎

Ahmadinejad, however, did not make that choice. As a result, more than anything he ‎actually said at Tehran University, the spotlight fell on pictures of angry students that ‎called their president a dictator. ‎

This results from the fact that whenever the president defends his policies with respect to ‎world peace, or the Holocaust, or relocating Israel to Alaska or Europe, he attributes his ‎remarks to the Iranian nation, and voices his own opinions as if they were the demands of ‎the Iranian people. As a result, it is very important that the picture of the Iranian people ‎that is reported around the world through cameras be that of a unified and united people ‎that stand behind their president’s decisions. ‎

If such a thing was possible 20 years ago, it is not possible today. The smallest protest ‎traverses borders in the shortest time and appears in news websites or television ‎networks. ‎

The students’ protest, which came shortly after the President’s speech at Columbia ‎University, targeted the most sensitive part of Ahmadinejad’s propaganda discourse: that ‎there are many in Iran who not only disagree with the President’s policies, but actually do ‎not view Ahmadinejad’s views as those of the Iranian people. ‎

Recent surveys show that a great number of people that voted for Mahmoud ‎Ahmadinejad are not happy with their decision anymore. His resistance to answering the ‎public’s questions about economic, political and security threats, as well as free speech, ‎inflation, and other issues, demonstrates that the division between the public and the ‎government, which is created by the President’s insistence on implementing his ‎unpopular and poorly researched policies, is becoming even deeper. For a President who ‎has closed ears and a wide and open mouth, however, this is only the beginning the way. ‎