Why Are These Iranians ‘Really, Really Happy With Trump’?
Some would dress up with Uncle Sam top hats, Bill Clinton imitators would always have a big cigar hanging from his puppet mouth,
and George W. Bush would be decorated with stars of David, to highlight the special relationship with Israel.
For decades, Iranian revolutionary families would work late into the night to make sock puppets, cartoons
and effigies of every American president since Jimmy Carter, then proudly parade them around during an anti-American protest and burn them in a bonfire.
After seeing that people in the West became very upset by cartoons showing Jews with big noses drawing murder lines around nonexistent
bodies while wearing placards saying "Holocaust," they decided to turn the competition into a yearly event, with different themes.
But in President Trump the United States has a new, colorful president who denounces Iran,
and Iranian hard-line groups cannot believe their good luck.
Several winners received cash prizes in dollars for showing the president in the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan, sharing
a Time magazine cover with Adolf Hitler, or as Captain America wielding the Statue of Liberty as a bludgeon.
Mr. Babaei acknowledged that he would be upset if a similar contest in America made fun of Ayatollah Khamenei, but he said he had a good reason.