Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surprised Twitter after coming out in support of Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’, and attacking the Canadian government for its “violent crackdown” on protesters.
“The Violent crackdown on #FreedomConvoy2022 has nothing to do with freedom of speech and human rights. How coercion could be related to liberty and freedom of choice?” Ahmadinejad wrote in an English-language tweet Thursday night.
He accompanied the post with the #TruckersForFreedom hashtag.
The out of left field tweet surprised some users. “This gotta be the most wtf tweet of the month,” one wrote. “What timeline am I in?” another quipped. “Iran attempts to produce ‘highly enriched’ irony!” a third joked. “We’re in a simulation and they’re just f*ckin with us at this point,” another suggested.
Others expressed cautious support for the former Iranian president. “If Ahmadinejad is criticizing your anti-protest efforts, you probably aren’t one of the good guys,” one person wrote. “Wait are you pro trucker? Does that mean I agree with you? I’m confused now,” another said. “Amazing. I agree with him,” a third suggested. “Right? Who’s the supposed brutal dictator here?” another quipped. “Sad day when IRAN can legitimately criticize @JustinTrudeau on human rights,” yet another added.
Ahmadinejad’s tweet isn’t the first time that the veteran politician, who served as Iran’s president between 2005 and 2013, has surprised English-speaking audiences with his incisive, funny or unexpected comments on everything from US politics to celebrity quarrels.
In 2018, he unexpectedly weighed in on the feud between then-President Donald Trump and LeBron James, tweeting that he personally loves American basketball players including LeBron, Michael Jordan and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, and that Trump “should love all, and not differentiate between them.” The same year, he defended Serena Williams, accusing the French Open of “disrespecting” her. In 2019, he tweeted his condolences after finding out about the death of rapper Nipsey Hussle, and surprised moms everywhere by tweeting out a heartwarming Mother’s Day message. In 2020, Ahmadinejad got in trouble for using a Tupac lyric containing the N-word to pay tribute to George Floyd, and garnered headlines for tweeting at Angelina Jolie about how to solve institutionalized racism in America. Ahmadinejad also regularly surprises Christians with his annual Christmas wishes messages.
In his home country, Ahmadinejad is best known for his ascetic lifestyle, his populist economic policies, which have been described as a mix of socialism and capitalism, campaigns against corruption, and programmes to improve Iran’s economic and military self-sufficiency, as well as his close personal friendship with the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Trucker Ruckus
Canadian police began moving in to arrest Freedom Convoy protest leaders in Ottawa on Thursday night. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has characterized the truckers as a “small fringe minority” and refused to meet their demands to end vaccination mandates.
On Monday, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to put an end to the demonstrations. The premiers of Alberta, Manitoba, Saskachewan and Quebec marked their opposition to the measure.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association initiated legal proceedings against the Trudeau government on Thursday over its invocation of the Emergencies Act, saying the trucker protests do not warrant its invocation. Earlier, Brian Peckford, the former Newfoundland premier who helped draft the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was signed in 1982 by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s father, began his own lawsuit against the federal government over its vaccine mandates for air travel.
Throughout the protests, truckers and their supporters have called for demonstrations to remain peaceful, and have stressed that they are not opposed to vaccines themselves - but to measures aimed at forcing or bullying Canadians into taking them.