My latest New Matilda column discusses the sides of Iran rarely examined in the Western press:
I was in Iran during the recent visit of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. It was a pitiful sight watching Ortega and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad embracing like old friends, talking of resisting US imperialism and working together to ensure greater ”˜justice.’ Many Iranians I met were as dismissive of Ortega’s gesture as they were of Venezuela’s Leftist President Hugo Chávez’s effusive embrace of the extremist regime before him.
Moazzami couldn’t understand why Chávez, who claims to believe in human rights, would come to Tehran and speak of solidarity with a government that imprisons and tortures dissidents. The logic appears to be that resisting the US is the primary goal for both of them and any other factors recede into irrelevance. It is both a short-sighted and morally bankrupt position, but there is silence from the international Left towards such manoeuvres.
My New Matilda archive is here.