Notice the difference?
These are the questions that many Iranians are asking after watching the recent appearances of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where in the backdrops prepared for official ceremonies, the colors of Iran’s flag appear to have been changed from red, white and green to red, white and blue. In his New York Times‘ blog, Robert Mackay provided pictures of the two backdrops that featured images in which Iran’s national colors seem to have been reimagined to remove any trace of the color green. Green is the color that the country’s opposition has adopted as its symbol.
Robert Mackay: Aren’t red, white and blue the colors of not one but several of Iran’s official enemies? And isn’t the color green associated not just with Iran’s opposition, but with Islam and the leadership of the Islamic Republic?
The blog also carried a cartoon that Mackay had borrowed from Andrew Sullivan’s blog.
The cartoon, sent to Andrew Sullivan by one of his readers, had apparently circulated among Iranians last year. The reader explained: “When the below cartoon came out days after the June 12th election, no one would have predicted that it would happen for real… it has literally! This is almost unbelievable. There were rumors that the Government agencies and state TV were ordered to avoid Green colors as much as possible, but to change the green stripe of the national flag to blue??? That is beyond shocking.”
Pictures taken from the New York Times Blog.