Video from Zimbabwe on Thursday showed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Robert Mugabe, two presidents who remain in office despite claims from opponents that they engaged in electoral fraud, enter a news conference hand in hand at the start of a state visit by Iranian officials to a country with untapped uranium deposits.

In their remarks at a news conference in the capital, Harare, and at a state dinner later on Thursday, both men tried to cast Western concerns over the elections that kept them in power and over Iran’s nuclear program as “neocolonial” meddling.

Mr. Mugabe told reporters, “President Ahmadinejad and myself have the same policy, and same stance, anti-imperialist, anticolonialist, and stands to protect our sovereignty and our right of ownership of our resources.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad claimed: “Iran and Zimbabwe are two countries that continue their efforts to maintain their sovereignty and they move in the path of independence, and do everything in the path of peace, brotherhood and justice.”

Mr. Mugabe’s decision to invite the Iranian president to visit led to a furious response from the Movement for Democratic Change, his coalition partners in Zimbabwe’s awkward unity government, which was forged after a disputed, and violent, presidential election in 2008. The M.D.C., whose leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, led Mr. Mugabe after the first round of balloting in the 2008 election, only to be forced by an outbreak of violence to withdraw and flee the country, now shares power with Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF.

Last week the Movement for Democratic Change issued a statement on the Iranian president’s visit that began:

The unilateral decision by ZANU-PF to invite Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to officially open the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair is not only a colossal political scandal, but an insult to the peace-loving people of Zimbabwe and Iran. The M.D.C. condemns the scandalous invitation of Ahmadinejad. […] It is no secret that Ahmadinejad has perforated human rights credentials. He has made his reputation as a war monger, a trampler of human rights, an executioner of those with dissenting voices and a leader of questionable legitimacy due to his controversial electoral victory in last year’s presidential election in June. While we understand Mr Mugabe’s shared values with Ahmadinejad, whose legitimacy is in tatters following the contestation of last year’s presidential results by the Green Movement party led by Mir Hossein Mousavi, we call upon the inclusive government to desist from associating our peace-loving country with despots. While Ahmadinejad will be wining and dining in our country next week, nine opposition activists in Iran will be facing death sentences for merely contesting the outcome of last year’s presidential results. As a party, we feel that a country is defined by its friends. We want to place it on record that judging by his record, Ahmadinejad is coming not as a friend of Zimbabwe, but an ally of those that unilaterally invited him. Choice of friends defines character, and inviting the Iranian strongman to an investment forum is like inviting a mosquito to cure malaria. Hobnobbing with dubious political leaders confirms stereotypes that we are a banana republic.

A Zimbabwean newspaper controlled by ZANU-PF, The Herald, fired back at critics of the visit on Friday, in an article that noted M.D.C. officials were “conspicuous by their absence” at a ceremony where, it said, “hundreds of jubilant Zimbabweans gathered to welcome Islamic Republic of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” According to the newspaper “observers” in Zimbabwe said Mr. Tsvangirai’s party “was simply dancing to the tune of Western countries, which have tried to effect illegal regime change in Iran since the popular 1979 revolution that deposed the Western-backed puppet regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi.”