Meeting of two dictators, Ali Khamenei and Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania

Nicolae Ceaușescu, the "Conducător," would have presented himself as the quintessential communist strongman, an aging figure whose visage, perpetually plastered across every public space, had grown increasingly drawn and severe with the weight of his paranoia and the unsustainable edifice of his personal cult. His regime, characterized by vast, opulent architectural projects alongside widespread poverty and a pervasive secret police (the Securitate), embodied a grotesque distortion of socialist ideals. One could imagine him, stiff and unyielding, meticulously prepared with statistics and propaganda points designed to impress upon his guest the strength and self-sufficiency of socialist Romania, even as the queues for basic foodstuffs lengthened outside the grand palaces.