FIDEL CASTRO’S "LANDMARK" VISIT TO TEHRAN ANGERED HIS "FUNS"
By Safa Haeri, IPS Editor
TEHRAN, 7 May (IPS) Fidel Castro, the – still—charismatic leader of Cuba arrived in Tehran Monday for a three days official visit that some Iranian "funs" and "nostalgics" considers as "harmful" to his image as the last "dinosaurs" of "romantic" revolutionaries of the third world who keeps alive the dying torch of combat against the Western capitalism and "American imperialism".
"Except for their antagonism to the United States that has catalogued both Iran and Cuba as rogue states, not only the two countries have nothing in common, even comparing them is an insult to the Cubans, for, even the blood group between the Lider Maximo and Iranian clerical leaders is fundamentally different", observed Mr. Mehdi Khanbaba-Tehrani, a former Iranian Marxist trained in Cuba and China.
Cuba is secular; men and women are equals, enjoying basic human freedoms though not the same as in Western democracies. The island is also a paradise of love, music and drink. Iran, on the other hand, a theocratic apartheid, where clerical rulers have limited to the minimum possible people’s political, social and cultural rights, love and alcohol are forbidden, women and religious minorities treated as second-class citizens.
"If political freedoms does not exist in Cuba, but the revolution has brought some benefits for the poor, giving them free education and a good standard of health care while in Iran, even Shi’a Muslims are muzzled, as dissident Grand Ayatollah Hoseinali Montazeri lives under house arrest and tens of members of Iran Freedom Movement and others affiliated to the islamist-nationalist groups arrested and tortured", Mr. Khanbaba-Tehrani said in a telephone interview with Iran Press Service.
Contrary to what was rumoured, Mr. Castro was welcomed at the Tehran
Mehrabad International Airport by Construction Jihad Minister and Head of Iran-Cuba Joint Economic Commission Mahmoud Hojjatia and not his counterpart, Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami.
In the opinion of Mr. Khanbaba-Tehrani who new personally the Lider, Che or Chou En Lai, Mr. Castro’s visit to Iran would "greatly" serve and enhance the reformist camp of Mr. Khatami, as it coincide with the pre- presidential campaigning.
"For some of Iranian revolutionaries defending the reforms process, the visit of Lider Maximo revives a period of their lives when, they also believed in ideals and goals defended by Fidel, Che (Guevara) and some other myths and idols. However, if Iranian leaders think that by welcoming Castro the intelligentsia would cast them as revolutionaries of the type of the Cuban leader, they are totally wrong, as Castro is still committed to his revolutionary faith while the Iranians are a bunch of backward reactionaries", he said.
"This visit is economically and politically very important", Cuban ambassador to Tehran Dario Urra Torriente told the French news agency AFP. "We have a common enemy, the United States, which has put in place similar laws aimed at strangling us economically," he said, noting that a common stand against US policy is creating "political co-operation" between Havana and Tehran.
More efficient ways and means to mount world-wide campaign against Washington’s "hegemony", fostering political and economic co-operation among the G-77, a "club" joined by 133 developing nations that is currently presided over by Iran as well as in the Non Aligned Movement, supporting Palestinian’s struggle against Israel and above all, fostering economic, cultural, technical and political ties between Communist Cuba and Islamic Iran are subjects that Mr. Castro, 74, would discuss with his hosts, including the leader of the regime, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, whom he met in Harare in 1986, President Khatami, Speaker of the Majles Hojjatoleslam Mehdi Karrubi and Head of Expediency Council Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.
Visits between Iranians and Cubans are frequent. The outgoing President Khatami visited officially Cuba in the autumn of 2000 and met again Mr. Castro recently on his way back home from the last Summit of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) held in Caracas and was, unexpectedly, welcomed at the Havana airport by his Cuban counterpart, who drove him directly to his residence.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque visited Iran in January this year and an Iranian parliamentary delegation went to Havana in April.
Pro-Government daily "Iran News", published by the official Iranian news agency IRNA, in its editorial on Monday welcomed the "landmark" visit of Mr. Castro and praised Iran-Cuba for what it called, their efforts in "debunking the myth of US supremacy", but regretted, the "unsatisfactory" trade level.
Bilateral trade however is currently only at around 20 million dollars annually, and there is no oil trade between them. Iran purchases around 100,000 tones of Cuban sugar each year, but on the international market instead of directly, while Havana is helping Tehran construct seven sugar refineries.
The strongest cooperation between the two nations has been in the health and sport sectors. Cuba has launched a major project to sell heart and hepatitis medicines, which will be manufactured in a factor just outside Tehran. Meanwhile more than a dozen Cuban managers, including for basketball, volleyball and judo, train young Iranians here.
"But the most important factor of all that strongly binds Iran-Cuba ties, is their common cause", ie, their opposition to the hegemonic policies of the US", the English-language daily commented, adding: " In this regard, the persistence of both nations' opposition to the US and its policies, is finally paying off as most European states are now ignoring US dictates regarding Washington's boycott of Tehran and Havana and are establishing closer political, cultural and commercial relations with the two capitals".
Mr. Castro is heading a high-ranking political and economic delegation to Tehran, which includes Cuba’s number two man Dr Jose M. Miyar Barruecos, and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.
The Tehran University's Political Sience is to offer a honorary doctorate to the Cuban strongman and the Tarbiat Modares (religious) University will also grant him its first honorary doctorate.
Mr. Castro arrived from Algeria and will be going on to Malaysia, a staunch opponent of America in South East Asia. ENDS IRAN CUBA 7501