'Isolated' Iran boasts attendance of leaders, kings at NAM

JPost - Tehran immediately begins milking Non-Aligned Movement summit for propaganda, anti-Israel purposes; Iran's FM Salehi: Tragedy of Palestine is root cause of regional conflict.

As the West continues to urge Israel to let sanctions and diplomacy – including isolation – play out on Iran, Tehran on Sunday convened the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit and immediately began milking the event for propaganda and anti-Israel purposes.

The Iranian press also used the convention to demonstrate how the country is anything but isolated.

"Tehran to Host 2 Kings, 27 Presidents, 7 PMs for NAM Summit," was the headline to a story on the summit on the official Fars news agency on Saturday. The headline left out perhaps the most prized participant – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The report said that in all 100 states have announced their participation at different levels. There are some 120 countries in the movement.

Delegates attending the first meetings of the conference Sunday morning were greeted at the entrance to the convention center by an exhibition of the cars of three Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated in recent months.

The exhibition, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, "displays the cars carrying martyrs Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, Dariush Rezaienezhad and Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan when they were assassinated. The three scientists as well as Majid Shahriari were assassinated by Zionist regime elements."

Another exhibit at the conference, according to IRNA, is one dubbed "Iran, Victim of Terrorism [that] shows in picture the history of terrorist attacks in Iran, in different languages, after the victory of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution."

Meanwhile, Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi addressed the opening meeting of the NAM conference by blasting Israel, saying – according to Fars –that the "tragedy of Palestine" is "the root cause of conflicts in the region."

"We, as the main part of the international community, want a just policy to determine the fate of the Palestinians and oppose the illegitimate acts of the Zionist regime," Salehi said. He was quoted by the news agency as saying that peace in the region is not possible through support for the Zionist regime's "blind terrorism, occupation and torture."

In an indication of how Iranian officialdom will use the conference for its own purposes. Iranian Defense Minister Brig.-Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said Sunday that the summit "demonstrates the Islamic Iran's thriving power," despite "all the propaganda launched [by the West] about Iran's isolation on the international scene.

"Surely, holding the summit in Iran can give more power to the Islamic Republic ruling system and create abundant opportunities in the international arena," the minister was quoted as saying by Fars.

NAM is comprised of some 120 member and 17 observer countries. It was formed in 1961 by countries claiming not to be aligned with any of the major superpowers, and is the largest grouping of countries outside the UN.

Iran will have the rotating chairmanship of the organization for the next three years.

One Israeli government official lamented that the summit in Tehran gives the Iranian regime a chance to "showcase that it is not isolated, to say there is no serous diplomatic pressure, and to give the regime a chance to show its own people it has friends and allies."