A flashy new music video featuring Iran’s recently elected President, Hassan Rouhani, was reportedly produced by documentary maker Hossein Dehbashi.
A flashy new music video – albeit in black and white – has taken Iran's recently elected President, Hassan Rouhani, to yet more popular heights.
Reportedly produced by documentary maker Hossein Dehbashi, who made Mr. Rouhani's campaign videos earlier this year, the video shows the President delivering a speech at his inauguration ceremony on Aug. 3.
With a strong resemblance to U.S. President Barack Obama's 2008 Yes We Can video, Mr. Rouhani's words about the love of nation, the unity of people and the peaceful face of Islam are taken up by a host of Iranian media personalities, including men, veiled women and children.
Behind them is a gentle strumming of guitar and other regional instruments as well as historic photos of the Islamic Republic since 1979, including clips of the state's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The lyrics, which are spoken in Arabic and Kurdish as well as Farsi, are based on Mr. Rouhani's Aug. 3 speech that followed his endorsement by Iran's current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei:
Let us give all Iranians who love their country the opportunity to serve it. Let us allow elites to serve the nation. Let us allow the hearts to be cleansed from hatred.
Let us have love, peace, and friendship instead of anger and antagonism. Let us allow Islam with its peaceful face, Iran with its rational face, the revolution with its humane face, and the establishment, with its affecting face, continue to create epics.
The video was apparently posted on his website and a link to the video was tweeted from Mr. Rouhani's Persian and English Twitter accounts: @Rouhani_ir and @HassanRouhani.