Ahmadinejad's attempt to make Hugo Chavez eat food while sitting cross-legged on the floor

Iran’s religious conservatives have reacted furiously to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hugging the distraught mother of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at his funeral last Friday. Photos emerged of Ahmadinejad giving the elderly Elena Frias de Chavez a hug at last Friday’s funeral in Caracas, a gesture deemed “un-Islamic” by religious conservatives. They said that hugging and expressing emotions were “improper for the dignity of the president of a country like the Islamic Republic of Iran.