State Department spokesman Philip Crowley, learning from reporters that Ahmadinejad celebrated turned 54 on Thursday, took to the micro-blogging service to ask him to release two US hikers detained in Iran since last year.<\/p>\n
“Happy birthday President Ahmadinejad. Celebrate by sending Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer home. What a gift that would be,” Crowley tweeted.<\/p>\n
“Your 54th year was full of lost opportunities. Hope in your 55th year you will open Iran to a different relationship with the world,” read another tweet.<\/p>\n
Palin, the Republican Party’s 2008 candidate for vice president who enjoys a following among conservatives, was not amused.<\/p>\n
“Happy B’day Ahmadinejad wish sent by US Govt. Mind boggling foreign policy: kowtow (and) coddle enemies; snub allies. Obama Doctrine is nonsense,” she wrote in her own message on Twitter.<\/p>\n
Palin highlighted Ahmadinejad’s past calls for the destruction of Israel.<\/p>\n
Crowley defended himself on Friday.<\/p>\n
“My tweet was simply to suggest that a reasonable celebration of President Ahmadinejad’s birthday would be to release Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal,” Crowley told reporters.<\/p>\n
“I can’t imagine why Sarah Palin would object to the release of the two hikers who remain in custody, we think inappropriately,” he said.<\/p>\n
President Barack Obama last year offered dialogue with Iran aimed at repairing three decades of sour relations since the Islamic revolution.<\/p>\n
The Obama administration has voiced disappointment at Iran’s response and tightened sanctions on the clerical regime over its disputed nuclear program.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A tongue-in-cheek US birthday message to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Twitter may not have reached the intended recipient, but triggered a rebuke from someone else — Sarah Palin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}