He’s an Iranian stuck in the Stone Age – she’s an Iranian soaring straight into the Space Age.
Rogue Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who infamously banned fast food and “indecent” Western music in his country after taking power in 2005, hits Manhattan today for a historic U.N. powwow.
Meanwhile, space tourist Anousheh Ansari – a raven-haired beauty who fled her country’s repressive regime to become a self-made millionairess in Texas – made a triple play into history yesterday when she became the first woman, first Muslim and first Iranian to enter space.
Together, Ahmadinejad and the feisty trailblazer represent the best and worst a country can offer.
The defiant Muslim beauty, in an obvious dig at the conservative crackdowns spearheaded by Ahmadinejad in Iran, said before her historic launch:
“I think my flight has become a sort of ray of hope for young Iranians living in Iran, helping them to look forward to something positive, because everything they’ve been hearing is all so very depressing and talks of war and talks of bloodshed.”
Anousheh, having scored a fortune with her husband in a telecommunications business, reportedly shelled out $20 million to hitch a ride with a U.S. astronaut and Soviet cosmonaut aboard a cramped rocket to the International Space Station. As for Ahmadinejad, he will hop aboard a much more mundane mode of transportation – a jetliner – to JFK Airport before taking, gasp, a four-wheeled vehicle and dodging gridlock to arrive at the Intercontinental Hotel in Midtown.
Ahmadinejad will be hunkering down in a modest suite on the hotel’s 10th floor, sandwiched among dignitaries from Afghanistan. But he won’t be allowed to travel outside a 25-mile radius of Columbus Circle, courtesy of travel restrictions slapped on him by the State Department.
Sparring with the Bush administration over Iran’s worrisome nuclear program, Ahmadinejad reps an “axis of evil” country that hasn’t had formal diplomatic relations with the United States since 1979, when 52 Americans were taken hostage at the embassy in Tehran.
The 50-year-old, hard-line honcho created a mild ruckus before even arriving when he balked at attending a banquet for 144 foreign heads of state, including President Bush, this afternoon – because wine will be served at the event.
Ansari, by contrast, plans to take in plenty of sights where she’s headed.
“You’ll see how small and how fragile the Earth is compared to the rest of the universe,” she said of her expected views more than 200 miles above the Earth.
“It will give us a better sense of responsibility.”
Ansari was 16 when she and her family fled Iran at the height of its religious-fueled revolution at the hands of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Her parents said their decision was to provide more opportunities for their brainy, scientific-minded daughter, who in their own country wouldn’t even be able to ride in an elevator with a man, much less pursue her intellectual goal.
Ansari surpassed their wildest dreams in the United States.
After the family settled in Virginia, Ansari quickly learned English and developed into a top student, receiving a bachelor’s degree in electronics and computer engineering at George Mason University and a master’s in electrical engineering from George Washington University.
She then took a job at the phone company MCI, where she met her husband, Hamid, also an engineer. Within a few years, the pair quit and moved to Dallas, where they began developing signal-switching software for firms.
When they sold their business in 2000, the couple reaped a windfall – paving the way for Ansari’s dream to reach the stars.
In another universe, Ansari and Ahmadinejad’s paths may have crossed. Ahmadinejad also focused on science and engineering in school, winding up with a Ph.D. in transportation.
But he fell into the stronghold of a more conservative group, once reportedly plotting to kill author Salman Rushdie for his supposedly blasphemous writings. He wound up a right-wing fanatic who called the Holocaust a “myth” and said Israel should be obliterated.
Asked whether he visited the World Trade Center site during his visit to the United Nations last year, the leader coldly told Time magazine: “It was not necessary. It was widely covered in the media.”
Now take Ansari, who said she dreams that travels such as her own will one day lead to routine jaunts between planets. Boarding her rocket before hoards of media, she beamed and said, “I’m just so happy to be here.”
Additional reporting by Stefanie Cohen