Iran’s former President Ahmadinejad relies on tweets to help maintain a public persona

When former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took to Twitter this week to pay tribute to Michael Jackson’s birthday, it didn’t come as a surprise to those who’ve kept up with the hard-line conservative’s presence online. When he reemerged three years later in an attempt to run for president for a third term, Khamenei told Ahmadinejad that it was “not in the best interests of the country.” Nader Karimi Juni, an independent analyst based in Tehran and critic of the ex-president, said Ahmadinejad’s behavior on Twitter is an example of how he is trying to improve his reputation domestically and internationally. “He is trying to buy time so that if there’s any leadership change in the future, he and his cronies can come back to power.” Although Ahmadinejad’s motives for using Twitter may vary, many analysts and activists agree that it has helped the ex-president bypass media censorship in Iran. Access to those tools, however, has been difficult to come by because of economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. Ahmadinejad’s tweet Thursday about Jackson, who died in 2009, referenced the song “Man in the Mirror,” reading: “I’m starting with the man in the mirror I’m asking him to change his way” #HB #MJ Ahmadinejad isn’t the only Iranian politician leveraging the power of social media.