Ahmadinejad: Iran, US not headed for war

NF Reporter · 09-24-2007, 12:47 AM

AP - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in New York to protests Sunday and said in a television interview that Iran was neither building a nuclear bomb nor headed to war with the United States.

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waltky · 09-24-2007, 03:53 PM

Like Barney Fife said about Ernest T. Bass, "He's a nut!"...

Ahmadinejad Blasted By Columbia President
Sept. 24, 2007 - Lee Bollinger Calls Hard-Line Iran Leader A "Petty And Cruel Dictator''

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the stage at Columbia University to a blistering welcome from the president of the school, who said the hard-line leader behaved like "a petty and cruel dictator." Ahmadinejad smiled as Columbia President Lee Bollinger took him to task over Iran's human-rights record and foreign policy, and Ahmadinejad's statements denying the Holocaust and calling for the disappearance of Israel. "Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," Bollinger said, to loud applause. He said Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust might fool the illiterate and ignorant.

"When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous," Bollinger said. "The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history." Ahmadinejad rose, also to applause, and after a religious invocation, said Bollinger's opening was: "an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here." "There were insults and claims that were incorrect, regretfully," Ahmadinejad said, accusing Bollinger of falling under the influence of the hostile U.S. press and politicians. "I should not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment," he said.

He did not address Bollinger's accusations directly, instead launching into a long religious discursion laced with quotes with the Quran before turning to criticism of the Bush administration and past American governments, from warrantless wiretapping to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bollinger was strongly criticized for inviting Ahmadinejad to Columbia, and had promised tough questions in his introduction to Ahmadinejad's talk. But the strident and personal nature of his attack on the president of Iran was startling. "You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader's Holocaust denial. "Will you cease this outrage?"

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Quid pro quo?...

Columbia Alum Freed in Advance of Ahmadinejad's Speech
September 24, 2007 - The president of Columbia University is expressing relief that a Columbia alumnus was released from an Iranian prison - just a few days before the Iranian president is scheduled to visit Columbia University.

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Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh, who works for George Soros's Open Society Institute, was one of several Iranian-Americans detained by Iran for allegedly conspiring against Iran's national security. Tajbakhsh was freed on bail last Thursday. Iranian President Mahmoud Amadinejad is speaking at Columbia on Monday, and the invitation for him to appear on campus has drawn widespread condemnation from politicians and ordinary Americans, who view Amadinejad as an enemy of the United States and Israel.

In a statement on the Columbia University Web site, President Lee C. Bollinger said that he was among the "chorus of voices" calling on the Iranian government to free Dr. Tajbakhsh, a graduate of Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. "In recent discussions with the Iranian Mission, I communicated that I would raise his case, among many other issues, directly and publicly if President Ahmadinejad came to speak on our campus," Bollinger said in the statement.

"Dr. Tajbakhsh's belated release on bail should not change our determination to challenge the regime's record of unjust imprisonment and repression of such scholars, journalists and advocates working for a freer society in Iran," Bollinger added. Earlier this month, Iran released another Iranian-American scholar, Haleh Esfandiari, who was detained for eight months (including three months in jail) on the same charge that landed Tajbakhsh in an Iranian prison.

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waltky · 09-09-2008, 05:11 AM

Israelis gonna snatch his sassy butt...

Israeli Minister: It's OK To Kidnap Iran President
Sep. 9, 2008 - Israeli Cabinet Minister: It's OK To Kidnap Iranian President, Bring Him To Trial

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An Israeli Cabinet minister and onetime spy who helped kidnap Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann and bring him to trial thinks the same tactic could be used on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad is feared and reviled in Israel because of his repeated calls to wipe the Jewish state off the map. His aggressive pursuit of nuclear technology has only fueled Israel's fears.

"A man like Ahmadinejad who threatens genocide has to be brought for trial in The Hague," seat of the international war crimes tribunal, Rafi Eitan said Tuesday. "And all options are open in terms of how he should be brought." Asked if kidnapping was acceptable, Eitan replied "Yes. Any way to bring him for trial in The Hague is a possibility." Eitan, a member of Israel's inner Cabinet of ministers with security responsibilities, said he was expressing his own opinion and nothing more.

Eitan, 81, was one of the Mossad agents who kidnapped Eichmann from Argentina in 1960 and brought him to Israel. Eichmann was tried and executed for carrying out Adolf Hitler's "final solution" to kill European Jewry. Eitan later headed a shadowy Defense Ministry unit that recruited Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish-American naval analyst who was caught spying for Israel in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison. The affair was one of the most damaging episodes in Israel-U.S. relations.

Israeli Minister: It's OK To Kidnap Iran President, Israeli Cabinet Minister: It's OK To Kidnap Iranian President, Bring Him To Trial - CBS News

waltky · 10-06-2008, 02:10 AM

Granny says Ahmadinejad better lissen up...

Israel may strike Iran nuke sites: French FM
5 Oct 2008, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned in comments published on Sunday that Israel would strike archfoe Iran before it was able to develop nuclear weapons.

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"I honestly don't believe (a nuclear weapon) will give any immunity to Iran," Kouchner said in an interview conducted in English with Israel's Haaretz newspaper during a two-day visit to the region. "First, because you will hit them before. And this is the danger. Israel has always said it will not wait for the bomb to be ready. I think that (the Iranians) know. Everyone knows." The newspaper's print edition quoted Kouchner as saying that Israel would "eat" Iran, but in a written statement the foreign minister said he had used the word "hit," and that he regretted any "phonetic confusion".

Kouchner told Haaretz he hoped tough diplomacy and sanctions would persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment programme, which Israel and many Western countries believe is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. "Iran with an atomic bomb is unacceptable at all... Talking, talking talking, and offering dialogue, sanctions, sanctions, sanctions. Is the alternative to bomb first -- I think not." Iran has always insisted its atomic drive is entirely peaceful. Israel is widely regarded as the only nuclear armed state in the Middle East but it has never confirmed or denied having an arsenal. Kouchner is set to meet outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni -- who is trying to form a new coalition government to succeed Olmert's administratin -- on Sunday.

France currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, which has been sponsoring Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as part of the Middle East Quartet, which also includes the United States, the United Nations, and Russia. On Saturday Kouchner toured the West Bank town of Jenin, the focus of a months-old Palestinian security crackdown that has been praised by Israel and the United States -- and met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. Kouchner hailed the peace talks which were formally relaunched last November but said they were unlikely to meet their stated goal of a comprehensive agreement by the end of the year.

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Any Israeli attack will be seen as US attack: Iran
6 Oct 2008, Symbolising Israel as a signature mark of the United States in the Middle East, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said that
any offensive action by Tel Aviv would be seen as an attack by Washington.

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Iran does not believe that Israelis or Americans will attack its nuclear facilities but any attack by Tel Aviv would be considered an attack by Washington, Mottaki said. "In the Middle East, (no one) makes a distinction between the US and Israel," the minister said in an interview. Asked why his country is calling for wiping out Israel from the map of the earth, Mottaki said Tehran does not recognise Israel.

Reiterating to continue its uranium enrichment programme, he said "What we are doing is completely legal," emphasising that negotiations are the only way to arrive at mutually acceptable solution to the issue. Mottaki, however, welcomed the Bush administration's decision to send its Under Secretary William Burns to attend recent talks between Tehran and European Union on nuclear issue saying as "the first realistic step" by Washington.

"We welcomed the participation by Mr Burns in the Geneva talks. We feel that if this is the realistic approach taken by the US right now vis-à-vis the nuclear issue, they must continue with such efforts," he added. Previously, Mottaki said the US administration attached certain provisos to their presence in the talks. Burns' "presence in Geneva meant that those were no longer in play. An effort has started and if it is to succeed in resolving the nuclear issue, we have to take it to the next step," he added.

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