During a recent visit to Qom, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with only two ‎ayatollahs (Mesbah Yazdi and Nouri Hamedani), and spoke to a group of seminary ‎students at a promotional event that was apparently joined with financial handouts to ‎seminary students. The funds were used to aid the students in solidifying their message ‎during next month’s religious gatherings (month of Moharram, when Shias mourn the ‎death of their third Imam).‎

In the promotional campaign event between Mr. Ahmadinejad and seminary students, the ‎hardline president characterized the obstacles facing his administration as extraordinary, ‎and emphasized that the problems of the past three years had been unprecedented in the ‎past thirty years, so much so that “all powers at the global level had for the first time ‎united against Iran, confronted Iran and imposed the heaviest sanctions and psychological ‎warfare on us.” ‎

Without citing his source the head of Iran’s government claimed that enemies (in the past ‎three years) had 15 times taken an assault position on Iran and had and imposed the ‎harshest economic pressures on the country. ‎

According to the official state-run news agency, the president continued narrative that, ‎‎“We had been under US sanctions during and after the imposed war [Iran-Iraq war, but ‎this time they passed three resolutions against us at the United Nations Security Council, ‎which are enforceable by all nations, and unlike in the past they have blocked our ‎banking system and detained our ships on sea and our products in containers.” ‎

These sentences are fully and completely similar to those uttered by opponents of the ‎administration, so there is no room for denial. What this means is that political ‎opponents of the Iranian regime and the country’s president see eye to eye on this. Since ‎Iran will be having another presidential election next year, it is reasonable to ask the ‎current president, who is himself apparently a candidate for that post, what plans does he ‎have to resolve these issues. Or should one expect that he will add to the crises by ‎resuming his confrontational tone? For example, could he turn the fifteen non-‎materialized war formations that he spoke of into one final formation? Or, increase the ‎blockade of the nation’s banking system and products in transit so much during the next ‎four years that the current thirty percent damage to the country’s financial resources ‎would rise to, say 80 percent? ‎

If the passage of three resolutions against Iran at the Security Council - which is an ‎international parliament and the most significant decision-making body for its members, ‎including Iran – is among the administration’s achievements - as it sometimes claims - it ‎is only fair that Ahmadinejad should clearly to the public who want to vote in the election ‎whether he is planning to resume the present direction while disregarding the danger this ‎brings. People, after all, have the right to know what the next president has in mind and ‎what policies he wants to pursue. If he desires to stop this trend, then why did he not do ‎so in his first term? If on the other hand, he has realized the issue only noww, then he ‎must honestly and clearly announce what his future plans are. ‎

It must be made clear to the Iranian public that if, for example, after they vote for Mr. ‎Ahmadinejad and he gets to stay president for another round, how far does he intend to ‎resume and continue these “achievements.” ‎

It is not only foreign policy that requires clarity but an administration that boasts the ‎receipt of seven million complaint letters from the public as an accomplishment must ‎explain what plans if any it has to reduce the number of people’s complaints; or ‎alternatively, if it plans to hire three hundred thousand bureaucrats to read seventy ‎million letters. ‎

On the economic front, it is clear that in the past three years the price of housing in the ‎country has increased by four hundred percent (although it has decreased by about twenty ‎percent in the past six months due to the economic crisis). The administration has ‎announced handing out land and loans to the public towards building several hundred ‎thousand housing units, but now is the time to announce how water, electricity and gas ‎will be supplied to the new units… and several uncountable instances like the ones ‎mentioned.‎

In reality, the things that the head of the president boasts about as his achievements are ‎not things that would make any official proud. To force the international community to ‎unite against us in passing three resolutions against us for the first time in history is not ‎something to be proud of, neither is the fact that enemies – according to Mr. ‎Ahmadinejad – have 15 times taken attack formations against this country. The clear ‎meaning of these things is the endangerment of lives of millions of citizens. This is the ‎first time in history that a president is actually boasting about these developments.‎