via Time to give dialogue a chance The Standard September 29, 2013
Iran President Hassan Rouhani’s telephone conversation with US President Barack Obama was ground breaking. In the past 30 years, the two countries were sworn enemies with anti-American sentiment in Iran rabid, while the feeling in America was reciprocal.
The rapprochement was not universally received as a good move in Iran with a vociferous group feeling totally betrayed; they chanted anti-American slogans at the airport when Rouhani arrived from New York.
But that was expected, considering the deep-rooted hatred inculcated into the Iranian psyche by successive extremist leadership, particularly that of immediate former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The US’s issue with Iran is centred mainly on Iran’s nuclear programme, with the US accusing the Persian Gulf state of being in the process of manufacturing nuclear weapons. But the new Iran president has said he wanted the nuclear impasse solved as quickly as in three months. This showed there is a possibility the two countries could find each other for the benefit of both.
The new air blowing between Tehran and Washington must have been received with alarm in Harare. President Robert Mugabe seems to have lost an ally in Iran.
Ahmadinejad sang from the same hymn book as Mugabe, and he was a key ally in the latter’s fight against America and the West.
In New York last week, while the Iranian president was conciliatory and progressive, President Mugabe was as combative as ever, prompting the US delegation to walk out on him during his address to the UN General Assembly.
The diplomatic tiff between Zimbabwe and the US is not about nuclear weapons, but about an abstract concept called democracy. The extent of the hatred between the Mugabe regime and America is hardly as intractable as that between the latter and Iran. In fact, there are more good things happening between the US and Zimbabwe than bad. Indeed, the US is Zimbabwe’s biggest benefactor by a long shot in terms of humanitarian assistance, in spite of the sanctions mantra that Mugabe is so ready to sing.
The US-Iran overture gives us hope that the US and Zimbabwe might also find each other sooner rather than later.
COMMENTS
Not during Mugabe era…..perhaps a new Zanu pf leader will try that
exactly, Iran has a new leader, we dont so you can see where the stumbling block is. The quandary is how many around our dear leader are of the same narrow minded thinking!!
The bitterness shows mudara is missing something from America and the west which is shopping shopping or maybe medication woo
This is why I believe gukurahundis are an irritation. They like to make their own person sanctions problems with America a national issue.
Why should I lose sleep because gukurahundi Mugabe and his wife cannot go shopping in the different American cities?
Now I hear they were about to break their 25-mile radius restriction in New York, due to their undying love of the American western way of life – they should just try it; we would love to have the gukurahundi family in an American jail!!