Diplomats poke fun at Donald Trump, while elsewhere Madonna loses her corset off the back of a golf buggy
The one upside to a rolling international crisis is that it can give backroom people a rare chance to shine. Witness, this week, the breakout stars of the Iranian diplomatic corps, who from two different diplomatic missions managed to poke fun at Donald Trump while maintaining the base-level decorum that so eludes the American president.
In Pakistan, the Iranian ambassador, Reza Amiri Moghadam, responded to questions about the ongoing blockade of the strait of Hormuz by the US with an elegant and irony-laden reference to Jane Austen. “It’s a truth universally acknowledged,” said the ambassador, in a reference that was almost certainly lost on his antagonist in Washington, “that a single country in possession of a large civilisation, will not negotiate under threat and force.” Oh, well played, sir!
Meanwhile, from the Iranian embassy in Ghana, a steady stream of trolling social media posts designed to turn Trump’s mockery around and send it back at him. After the US president’s recent spat with the pope, an excitable social media manager at the Iranian mission to Ghana posted a satirical note addressed “Dear Italy” in which it offered itself as a replacement friend for the US.
