Le Figaro yesterday expressed astonishment when discovering the role of Hungary’s President Viktor Orbán in back-channel negotiations between Iran and Israel. “It’s no secret,” writes Le Figaro, “that Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is a fervent supporter of Benyamin Netanyahu’s Israel. But what is less well known is that, at the same time, it maintains strong diplomatic ties with the Republic of Iran. To the point of serving as a meeting ground between the two sides on the brink of war since the April 1 bombing of an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria/… “
The hypothesis is based on the close to secret visit to Budapest on May 7 by former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the invitation of the National University of Public Service, for an obscure conference “on the evolution of man and his relationship with nature.” When the Iranian press reported about it, Israel’s embassy in Budapest went berserk, claiming this visit “gravely offends and tramples on the memory of the 600,000 Hungarian Jewish citizens who were murdered during the Holocaust.” The Hungarian government took refuge behind academic freedom and denied any official character to the visit. But, asks Le Figaro, “would Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, inevitably in the know, have risked alienating two of his key allies, Benyamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, by hosting a declared enemy of Israel?”
However, according to the business newspaper HVG, the university conference was in fact just a pretext for a secret meeting the day before. On May 6, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad traveled to a private meeting, with the protocol reserved for heads of state and in an armored vehicle, but without the presence of Hungarian officials. This “strengthens suspicions that Budapest has provided a neutral venue for a visit behind which lies an Iranian-Israeli issue,” writes HVG, whose diplomatic sources believe that this could only have happened with the green light from the highest Iranian and Israeli authorities. “Who could have met Ahmadinejad on May 6 in Budapest? This remains a mystery,” writes Le Figaro.
