http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/3/7/main-feature/1/cyrus-ahmadinejad-and-the-politics-of-purim
At this week’s pre-Purim meeting in Washington between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss Iran’s nuclear threat to Israel, Netanyahu gave Obama a present: the book (or m’gilah, scroll) of Esther, which tells how the Jewish heroine foiled Haman’s plot to kill the Jews of ancient Persia. Ancient Persia was also in the news last Purim—because of the “Cyrus Cylinder,” a historic artifact whose loan to Iran by Great Britain was used by President Ahmadinejad as an occasion to recast the great Persian emperor Cyrus as a symbol of Islamist anti-Zionism. Alex Joffe’s explanation of last year’s drama helps us understand this year’s crisis. — The Editors
Anyone who deplores the politicization of the past should have been apoplectic in September 2010 at the sight of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad receiving the loan of the “Cyrus Cylinder” from officials of the British Museum. Often touted as the “world’s oldest human-rights charter,” this clay object, about nine inches long and shaped like a cork, contains in tiny cuneiform writing a royal inscription of the great Persian king. It dates to about 530 B.C.E.
The Iranian press had long demanded that the Cyrus Cylinder be returned “home” from London, and the Tehran regime had gone so far as to threaten to sever all cultural relations with Britain if a loan were not forthcoming. So the British officials who finally agreed to relinquish the object had ample reason to be nervous about the transaction, and Ahmadinejad’s behavior at the solemn handing-over ceremony in Tehran could only have added to their anxiety. There, making his own connection between past and present, the Iranian president ostentatiously draped a Palestinian keffiyeh on an actor dressed as Cyrus. By December, Iran was requesting that the loan be extended for three months.