Hugo Chávez joked about an atomic bomb with his BFF Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. See the tyrannical friendships of Fidel Castro, Chairman Mao, Saddam Hussein, and others.
Did you hear the one about the two dictators and the atomic bomb? Hilarious stuff. Earlier this week Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chávez were yukking it up when the Iranian president visited Venezuela. “Despite those arrogant people who do not wish us to be together, we will unite forever," Ahmadinejad said, hugging it out with Chávez. And then Chávez went for the comedy gold, joking that there was a bomb hidden under a knoll in front of his palace. "That hill will open up and a big atomic bomb will come out,” he said. Oddly enough, the U.S. State Department wasn’t laughing.
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Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi shared more than just an appreciation of military uniforms—they were longtime political allies. Several years after Gaddafi assumed power, he was visited by Castro in Tripoli. Nearly 40 years later, El Presidente was a friend to the end. Following Gaddafi’s brutal death, Castro denounced NATO for its interference in Libya and was indignant that Gaddafi was "kidnapped and exhibited like a trophy of war, a conduct that violates the most elemental principles of Muslim norms and other religious beliefs."
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Here’s a heartwarming story: In 1975, when Ugandan dictator Idi Amin married his fifth wife, Yasir Arafat was his best man. The lavish ceremony was reported to have cost more than $3 million and was televised on national television, so citizens could watch Amin marry a former go-go dancer. And Uganda’s affection for Arafat continued long after Amin had lost power and fled the country. When the former PLO chairman was near death in 2004, Uganda’s deputy prime minister called on the nation to pray for his recovery.
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Theirs was a Cold War alliance that ultimately turned chilly. For years, China and the Soviet Union shared mutual political interests, most notably a love of communism and a dislike for the United States. Indeed, a year after Josef Stalin’s death, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev visited Chairman Mao and maintained good relations with him—at least in public. Alas, the bromance was short-lived. In 1959, Maoism and Marxism began to clash. During a seven-day visit to China, Khrushchev left after three days, and the next year, the U.S.S.R. withdrew its technical experts from the country as the nuclear race escalated.
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Back in those heady days when Saddam Hussein was a friend of the United States—Donald Rumsfeld famously shook his hand in a 1983 photo op—the Iraqi leader also enjoyed a good relationship with Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. The two had several state visits and were once even photographed with Yasir Arafat. But that all changed in 1990 when Hussein invaded Kuwait, despite telling Mubarak he wouldn’t do it. “For us, it was shocking. Shocking. I couldn't believe that this could happen in the Arab world,” Mubarak said in a Frontline documentary. “Saddam Hussein, we were very—in good terms and he was a friend. We know each other very well. But I didn't expect him to do that.” Mubarak then joined the U.N. coalition against Iraq and their friendship was never the same.
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They didn’t always see eye to eye politically, but Muammar Gaddafi and Robert Mugabe were longtime political allies, dating back to Mugabe’s rise to power in Zimbabwe. Over the years, Mugabe criticized the Libyan dictator for also having relations with the West. But in Gaddafi’s final days, it was reported that Mugabe was prepared to offer his old pal asylum. Because that’s what friends do.
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Sharing a love of baseball, track suits, and pissing off the United States, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez have been there for one another in good times and bad. Chávez has said, “For me, Fidel is like a father.” When Castro recently visited the Venezuelan leader in Cuba (where he was recovering from cancer treatment), Chávez went even further. After Castro brought some homemade peanut butter to Chávez, he told state television, “Fidel is like a saint.”
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It would seem like more than just a casual bromance when you make a “Pact of Steel” with another fascist dictator—which is how Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini sealed their political fates in 1939. And yet, these two frenemies couldn’t really get along. A year into the pact, Il Duce felt like the junior partner in the Axis power of World War II. But in 2009, the diaries of Mussolini’s mistress, Claretta Petacci, revealed a more intimate side of their fraught friendship. Recalling a meeting with Hitler in 1938, Mussolini told Petacci, “The Führer was very kind. At heart, Hitler is an old sentimentalist. When he saw me, he had tears in his eyes.”
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