Variability is one of the extreme observational properties of BL Lacertae objects .
AO 0235+164 is a well studied BL Lac through the whole electro-magnetic wavebands .
In the present work , we show its optical R band photometric observations carried out during the period of Nov , 2006 to Dec. 2012 using the Ap6E CCD camera attached to the primary focus of the 70 - cm meniscus telescope at Abastumani Observatory , Georgia .
It shows a large variation of \Delta R = 4.88 mag ( 14.19 - 19.07 mag ) and a short time scale of \Delta T _ { v } = 73.5 min during our monitoring period .
During the period of Dec. 2006 to Nov. 2009 , we made radio observations of the source using the 25-m radio telescope at Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory .
When a discrete correlation function ( DCF ) is adopted to the optical and radio observations , we found that the optical variation leads the radio variation by 23.2 \pm 12.9 days .