Photo Follies: Ahmadinejad Just Can't Win

Comforting Hugo Chavez' Mother

For a term-limited guy with only limited friends abroad and not many more at the moment at home, the photo of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad embracing Hugo Chavez' mother at the Venezuelan President's funeral should have seemed like a nice touch showing the Iranian President's human side.

But no: needless to say, hardline clerics denounced him; it's haram to embrace an unrelated woman unless she's drowning, say the clerics. As Robert Mackey notes at the New York Times' The Lede blog, his own supporters quickly claimed it was a sinister Photoshop by the Western media. But the photos they produced as the "real" ones were clear Photoshops, while the photo at left was from Venezuelan media, not Western, and there's video that appears to show the same thing.

So the one moment that might have given him a human side in Western eyes is being strenuously if unconvincingly denied. If  there's some kind of international prize for being hoist by your own PR, Ahmadinejad should win.

Lieberman Goes to South America to "Curb Iranian Influence." No, Seriously.

Avigdor Lieberman is embarking on a ten-day trip to South America. Quote from AP on the Haaretz website: "The Foreign Ministry said Monday that FM Avigdor Lieberman is heading to South America to curb Iranian influence on the continent." Day Two: Take Down Hugo Chavez? Day Three: Cure the Lame?

Seriously though:

Lieberman's 10-day visit to South America, the first in several years by an Israeli foreign minister, is set to begin today with Brazil, before moving on to Argentina, Peru and Colombia.

. "Lieberman is a racist and a fascist," Valter Pomar, secretary of international relations for the Workers Party (PT), told Haaretz. "The Brazilian left is organizing protests against him and against the policy he represents."

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, also a PT member, will meet Lieberman today in Brasilia. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion," a spokesman for the Brazilian foreign minister said. "Pomar's view certainly does not represent the government's position."

The president of Brazil's Jewish community, Dr. Claudio Luiz Lottenberg, said he had not heard about planned demonstrations. "We haven't had state visits for a long time and a bad environment has been created. Now we need to restart relations with a fresh attitude," he said.

Lottenberg, who will host Lieberman in Sao Paulo, said he will tell the foreign minister to try to refocus relations on "more than just trade."

Lieberman's trip to South America is aimed at helping curb Iranian influence there, the foreign ministry said.

Good luck, Yvette. (That really is his nickname, or more correctly the popular spelling of his real Belarussian name, which is Evet, now transformed into Avigdor.)

The Persians are Coming, the Persians are Coming!

A somewhat wry story in the Washington Post notes that Washington has been warning for months about the fact that Iran is building a huge new embassy in Managua, Nicaragua, except that it isn't. A Congressman compared it to Russian funding of Cuba, but Cuba was getting a million dollars a day in mid-2oth century dollars, and Iran's not that flush. Abu Muqawama comments on the story as well.