sentences:  A week later, CNN reported that Ahmadinejad attended the funeral of his “good friend” Chavez.Ahmadinejad embraced Chavez’s grieving mother at the funeral in “a show of compassion and support,” which according to CNN in Iran “was immediately bashed by newspapers and by conservative politicians who cited a religious prohibition against touching a woman who is not your wife or a relative.” After the funeral, Ahmadinejad affirmed that Iran-Venezuelan relations would stay strong regardless of who was elected as the next Venezuelan president.At the time, as of March 10, 2013, "annual bilateral trade between the two countries is estimated to be in the hundreds of million of US dollars."