Ahmadinejad be damned

By Pepe Escobar

It's all over the Iranian press: President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, self-described "street cleaner of the people", is in deep political trouble at home, subjected to crossfire from conservatives and reformers alike. All the more ironic considering the biblical tsunami of Washington spin portraying Ahmadinejad as the newest "new Hitler" (Saddam Hussein, after all, fell victim to a lynch mob).

As far as geopolitical strategy is concerned, it's as if Ahmadinejad might be as clueless as his US counterpart, President George W Bush. Well, it's not that simple. The conservative Etemad e-Melli newspaper rhetorically asked what exactly the Iranian president was up to in Latin America while US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was lobbying dictatorial Arab regimes - from Egypt to Saudi Arabia - to deep-freeze Iran over alleged "interference" in Iraq.

Well, he was consolidating what the White House already regards as the new "axis of evil" - the strategic relationship between Iran and Venezuela, sealed last September during Ahmadinejad's first visit to Caracas, right inside what the US historically considered its "back yard".

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In the lightning-quick Latin America tour that took him to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador, meeting re-elected leftist stalwart Hugo Chavez, the recently elected former guerrillero Daniel Ortega, and US-educated economist Rafael Correa, the key Ahmadinejad stop was in Caracas. A joint Iran-Venezuela US$2 billion fund for myriad projects will also benefit other friendly developing countries in Latin America and Africa that, in Chavez' words, "are making efforts to liberate themselves from the imperialist yoke".

Asia Times

I wonder why?