The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is facing domestic political
embarrassment after enduring a series of damaging snubs on a visit to
Brazil, Iran’s erstwhile close ally.
Amid a clamour of media ridicule, one
Iranian MP has criticised Mr Ahmadinejad for failing to abandon the trip
when he saw that he – and by extension, Iran – was being treated
disrespectfully.
Having prided himself in fostering close ties with Latin American leaders, Mr
Ahmadinejad found himself conspicuously frozen out at last week’s UN Rio +
20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, with none of his fellow leaders deigning to
meet him.
Amid a clamour of media ridicule, one Iranian MP has criticised Mr Ahmadinejad
for failing to abandon the trip when he saw that he – and by extension, Iran
– was being treated disrespectfully.
The Iranian leader’s torment began on arrival at Rio’s international airport
when he discovered that no senior officials from the host country had come
to greet him. Instead, he was met by the head of Iran’s state environment
body, Mohammad Javad Mohammadi-Zadeh, who had flown from Tehran earlier to
attend the international gathering.
Mr Ahmadinejad’s humiliation was compounded when his Brazilian counterpart,
Dilma Rousseff, declined his request for a face-to-face meeting. A reception
with the mayor of Rio at which Mr Ahmadinejad was to unveil a gift of ornate
pillars based on those at Persepolis – the historic seat of ancient Persian
monarchs – was cancelled.
Perhaps most galling of all has been the mocking response to a picture of the
president, taken as he is about to depart from Rio, that seems to emphasize
his diminutive physical stature as he poses in the presence of
heavily-armed, burly Brazilian bodyguards.
"The way the president was dealt with was demeaning,” Avaz Heydarpour, a
member of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy
committee, told the semi-official Mehr news agency. “When on arriving at the
airport, he saw that the status of the Islamic Republic and the presidency
was not observed, he should not have continued the trip.”
It is a far cry from a previous visit to Brazil in 2009, when Mr Ahmadinejad was feted by the country’s then president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – the only senior figure to meet him last week – despite loud protests from local Jewish groups, angry at his denials of the holocaust and frequent forecasts of Israel’s demise.
However, since taking power in 2010, Mrs Rousseff has distanced herself from Iran, a policy that has drawn criticism from Mr Ahmadinejad’s aides. The once-close ties between the two countries were further strained in April when an Iranian diplomat – who was subsequently recalled and fired – was accused of groping girls in a mixed swimming pool in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia.
It is a far cry from a previous visit to Brazil in 2009, when Mr Ahmadinejad was feted by the country’s then president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – the only senior figure to meet him last week – despite loud protests from local Jewish groups, angry at his denials of the holocaust and frequent forecasts of Israel’s demise.
However, since taking power in 2010, Mrs Rousseff has distanced herself from Iran, a policy that has drawn criticism from Mr Ahmadinejad’s aides. The once-close ties between the two countries were further strained in April when an Iranian diplomat – who was subsequently recalled and fired – was accused of groping girls in a mixed swimming pool in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia.
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