A photo of Ahmadinejad hugging the deceased's mother that caused a controversy in Iran was taken during the 2013 funeral of which world leader? (hint: not Nelson Mandela!)
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad he stated that his relationship with the supreme leader "is that of a father and a son." In 2012, Khamenei ordered a halt to a parliamentary inquiry into Ahmadinejad's mishandling of the Iranian economy. In 2016, Khamenei advised Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his former ally with whom his relationship was strained after Ahmadinejad accused his son Mojtaba Khamenei of embezzling from the state treasury, to not run for president again. Ahmedinejad was criticised by the religious and political groups in Iran for photographs taken of him embracing Elena Frias de Chavez, the mother of recently deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, at his
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad funeral. In the image, Ahmedinejad was thought to be holding her hands and in a cheek-to-cheek embrace; such an act, touching an unrelated woman, is considered haraam (forbidden) in Islam. Iranian government officials responded by stating that the image was a fake, then released a second photo showing Ahmadinejad in the same pose, but in this case hugging a man. This later photograph was debunked when it was discovered that the other man was Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, who had not been at the funeral. One of the most frequent criticisms about Ahmedinejad was the nepotism in his governments.