{The funeral service of Nelson Mandela could be a “trap” for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani because he could run into US President Barack Obama, a hardline Iranian daily warned Sunday.}<\/p>\n
The Islamic republic has yet to announce who will travel to South Africa for Tuesday’s memorial service and next Sunday’s funeral for the late president and Nobel laureate.<\/p>\n
Hardline newspaper Kayhan warned in an editorial that if Rouhani attends it could bring him face to face with Obama, “head of the Great Satan government”.<\/p>\n
“Some domestic and foreign media outlets are using the funeral ceremony as a pretext to push Rouhani towards a meeting with the head of the Great Satan government,” Kayhan said.<\/p>\n
Rouhani, a moderate, defeated a pool of conservatives in a June presidential election after vowing to engage with the West.<\/p>\n
Since then there has been a thaw in ties between Iran and world powers.<\/p>\n
The most remarkable development was a 15-minute telephone call between Obama and Rouhani in September, as the Iranian president was ending a visit to the US for the UN General Assembly.<\/p>\n
The call was the first contact between leaders of the two nations since diplomatic ties were severed more than three decades ago over the hostage-taking at the US embassy in Tehran.<\/p>\n
The Kayhan editorial, headlined “Satan lays a trap, this time in Johannesburg”, recalled comments by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after Rouhani’s September trip to New York.<\/p>\n
“Some of what happened in the New York trip was not appropriate,” Khamenei said at the time, without elaborating.<\/p>\n
Iranian hardliners and conservatives took that as indicating the supreme leader was unhappy the telephone chat had taken place.<\/p>\n
Since that conversation, Iran has struck a landmark nuclear deal with six world powers including the United States in another sign of a thawing of ties.<\/p>\n
The interim agreement reached last month following a decade of gridlock would freeze parts of Iran’s controversial nuclear programme while easing some of the crippling international sanctions against it.<\/p>\n
It is not clear if Rouhani will attend services for Mandela, but he sent a message of condolences following the death of the iconic South African.<\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has also tweeted a message saying: “We in Iran join the people of South Africa in mourning the death of Nelson Mandela, who inspired humanity with his courage&compassion.”<\/p>\n
Mandela, who died late on Thursday at the age of 95, had visited Iran in 1992 and again in 1999.<\/p>\n
{{AFP}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{The funeral service of Nelson Mandela could be a “trap” for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani because he could run into US President Barack Obama, a hardline Iranian daily warned Sunday.} The Islamic republic has yet to announce who will travel to South Africa for Tuesday’s memorial service and next Sunday’s funeral for the late president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000049562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-11724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000049562,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11724.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11724.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11724.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11724.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11724.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11724.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000049562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11724"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=11724"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=11724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}