President Nicolas Maduro, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
(CNSNews.com) – Two world leaders who are among Washington’s most outspoken critics met in Tehran at the weekend and discussed whether the United States is unbeatable. Also on their minds — the two candidates running for the White House.
“Some people think that America is invincible, while this notion is a big error,” Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“Frequent mistakes made by Americans during the past 15 years have caused them to seriously run aground in the region and be hopeless now,” he added.
“Steadfastness and rational resistance combined with foresight in the face of pressures will certainly lead to victory,” Khamenei said, according to a transcript of his remarks on his official website.
Venezuela recently succeeded Iran as rotating president of the Non-Aligned Movement, a leftover from the Cold War which styles itself as the developing world’s bulwark against industrialized Western powers.
Khamenei urged Maduro to take advantage of the NAM presidency to take the movement forward despite Western opposition.
“Western countries are not willing for the Non-Aligned Movement to become more active, but independent countries must move in the opposite direction,” he said. He forecast that in doing so, “the future would be certainly better than the past.”
For his part, Maduro – traveling in the Middle East at a time when lawmakers at home are threatening to put him on trial – praised Iran’s “powerful resistance” against U.S. hostility.
Maduro also predicted that the American government will soon be in decline, “regardless of which one of the two main election candidates in the United States become president.”
Iranian leaders have also been talking about the contest between presidential nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Last week, Khamenei declared that the presidential campaign was evidence that “spirituality and faith are lacking.”
He lamented the fact that “within the next few weeks, one of these two dueling candidates in the U.S. election – whose status and words you can observe – will become the president of a country which holds the world’s most power, wealth, nuclear weapons, and media.”
On Sunday President Hasan Rouhani added his voice, saying in a televised speech that the U.S. election was a choice between “bad” and “worse,” according to a report Iran Daily, a newspaper affiliated with the official IRNA news agency.
“Did you see the debate, the way of their speaking, accusing and mocking each other?” he told a crowd in the central city of Arak. “Do we want such a democracy in our country? Do we want such elections in our country?”
“The U.S. claims to have 200 years of democracy,” Rouhani continued. “There is no morality in that country. We can see to what level they have been lowered. You watched the presidential debates.”
“Look at their discourse, accusations and belittlement of each other.”
Rouhani said during a recent visit to the U.N. in New York another leader had asked him who he preferred, Trump or Clinton.
“I said, should I prefer bad over worse, or worse over bad?”
President Nicolas Maduro, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 
