Coming to a hemisphere near you — Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is embarking on a visit to four countries in Latin America: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador. Asked about this excursion at a Friday press briefing, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that [1] Ahmadinejad’s trip is a sign that Iran’s regime is “desperate for friends and flailing around in interesting places to find new friends.”
This inspired a rash of news stories playing up the desperation and isolation of Ahmadinejad & Co., and downplaying any real dangers Tehran’s Latin American hob-nobbing might pose to the U.S. The Associated Press reports, “Ahmadinejad Trip to Latin America a Sign of Desperation.” [2] The New York Times, under a headline calling Ahmadinejad “Increasingly Isolated,” [3] notes that on this trip Ahmadinejad is not visiting such hefty Latin American countries as Brazil, Argentina, Colombia or Mexico.
OK, thanks to a growing roster of sanctions pressed chiefly by the U.S. and EU, Ahmadinejad and his fellow thugs of the Iranian regime may be more isolated than they were a few years ago. But this trip hardly represents isolation and it certainly does not represent, as the State Department put it, “flailing around…to find new friends.” In Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Venezuela, Ahmadinejad is visiting old friends.
-read on at link-
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