To be sure, in Chavez, Ahmadinejad has an enthusiastic supporter who has vocally backed Iran’s nuclear program, taken sides with Tehran against Israel and adhered to the Iranian government’s line that domestic critics of its policies are little more than CIA stooges.
“What the empire does is make you laugh in its desperation to do something they will not be able to do: dominate the world,” Chavez said Sunday as he resumed his weekly television show, “Hello, Mr. President,” which had been suspended since June as he recovered from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor.
“We are free,” said Chavez, who told viewers that he would meet with Ahmadinejad on Monday. “The people of Latin America will never again kneel, dominated by the imperial Yankee.”
Before departing Tehran on Sunday morning, Ahmadinejad told the semiofficial Fars News Agency that strong ties with Latin America were vital toward “battling the hegemonic systems” of the United States and its European allies.
“We will discuss the hegemonic system’s efforts to interfere in countries and establish its military presence there,” he told Fars, using language similar to that employed by Chavez to appeal to his most radicalized followers. Other Iranian officials also have cast the trip as a sign that sanctions had failed.
Iran has not been isolated, Esmail Kowsari, a former general who serves on parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, told Fars on Sunday. He added that “one of the signs is the expansion of trade between Iran and other countries, particularly the Latin American ones.”
But Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba have small economies with little to offer Tehran as it searches for a tangible way to ease the impact of American sanctions. And Venezuela imports mainly from its neighbors while exporting oil, like Iran, a fellow member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries .
Ahmadinejad is not visiting Brazil, the world’s sixth-largest economy, nor the bigger countries in the region, which have diverse economies but also pragmatic diplomatic and economic ties with the United States.
“There are a handful of countries, including a small number of countries in Latin America, that have been willing to establish warm relations with the Iranian government because of shared objectives,” said Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin America program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, which has closely followed Iran’s diplomatic initiatives in the region. “Most of that agenda is driven by antipathy toward the United States and a desire to confront U.S. power.”
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