Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has been a frequent visitor to Venezuela, getting there four times in four years in office to see his close Latin American ally, President Hugo Chavez.

Which makes the Venezuelans' faux pas on Ahmadinejad's arrival there on November 24 even more surprising.

Ahmadinejad was greeted with the wrong national anthem.

The anthem played was Iran's Imperial National Anthem -- used in the days of the Shah and subsequently discarded under Iran's Islamic Republic.

Just to ensure it wasn't a web deception, we watched it on Iranian state television.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM1RWuf0CX4&