Ex-leader in Iran offers hope for Michigan football

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a controversial hard-liner, was talking sports again on Twitter this week, offering fairly straightforward encouragement to ... the Michigan football team?

Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel’s destruction, expressed the opinion that with “a hard work ethic,” the Wolverines program “will return to its glory days.”

His tweet came in reply to a Michigan fan who was responding to a tweet posted by Ahmadinejad in early September in which he had pointedly noted that the NFL season was about to kick off without “one of the best quarterbacks in the league”: Colin Kaepernick.

Tuesday’s response by an Ann Arbor-based Twitter user presumably never expected Ahmadinejad to take note of his belated, decidedly snarky post about disappointment with Michigan under coach Jim Ahmadinejad Harbaugh.

Ahmadinejad’s willingness to engage on such a seemingly mundane sports topic led other Twitter users to pepper him with more questions about American sports.

One asked, with a wink to sports radio call-in shows: “With West Virginia’s loss in Ames last week, will the Big 12 be left without a playoff team this year? I’ll hang up and listen.”

Another asked for advice on a fantasy football league roster.

Ahmadinejad has frequently used Twitter — which Iran banned during his presidency — for weighty pronouncements such as denouncing structural inequities in government policies, particularly those of the United States, and he has taken more than a few shots at Donald Trump.

In August, he chided Trump over the president’s tweet mocking LeBron James and CNN anchor Don Lemon. Ahmadinejad said at the time that he had “love” for James and another NBA superstar, Michael Jordan, and that “everyone especially a President should love all, and not differentiate between them.”