Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been making the rounds of this generations set of Latin American hothead dictators, making new friends and influencing people:
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Iran’s hardline president, touring Latin America in search of an alliance of “revolutionary countries,” said the U.S. is trying to hide its failures in Iraq by accusing his nation of funding insurgents there.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ducked a direct question by reporters Sunday about whether Iran was arming and supporting insurgents responsible for countless attacks in Iraq.
Speaking on the sidelines of his meeting with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Ahmadinejad said the charges were merely an attempt by the United States “to cover their failures by other means.”
“But they have been discredited and they can’t recover from that,” he said.
Ahmadinejad said the United States’ “attitude won’t solve their problems” in Iraq, and he accused the U.S. of ignoring the Iraqi people.
The Iranian president was in Managua as part of a whirlwind tour of Latin America’s newly inaugurated leftist leaders. He met with close ally and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez on Saturday, then was scheduled to attend the Monday inauguration of Ecuador’s new president, Rafael Correa, and meet Bolivian leader Evo Morales. All are outspoken critics of President Bush.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Iran and Nicaragua have shared the headlines:
The paths of Nicaragua and Iran crossed in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra affair, in which the U.S. secretly sold arms to Iran to free American hostages, then used some of the proceeds to back Contra rebels fighting to overthrow Ortega.
But that was long forgotten on Sunday, when the two countries signed a development agreement largely targeting Nicaragua’s economic and infrastructure problems. It called for the construction of dams and homes, and factories building everything from buses to bicycles. They also agreed to establish programs to improve drinking water, ports and the fishing industry.
Ahmadinejad spent much of his time lashing out at the United States.
During a visit to a trash-strewn neighborhood in the capital of Managua, he told hundreds of Nicaragua’s poor: “The imperialists don’t like us to help you progress and develop. They don’t like us to get rid of poverty and unite people. But the whole world knows that Nicaragua and Iran are together.”
Unfortunately for Nicaragua, that may turn out to be all true.
The bad U.S. going after innocent Iran
We cannot talk about Iraq these days without including Iran. There is no doubt that Iran is directly involved in the violence in Iraq. The commentary on Iran is varied, from one end of the spectrum to the other …