Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (محمود احمدی‌نژاد; born 1956), President of Iran.

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The World without Zionism

A speech at a conference in Tehran entitled "The World without Zionism" (26 October 2005)

• They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets. The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets, (it) deals very severely with those who deny this myth but does not do anything to those who deny God, religion, and the prophet. If you have burned the Jews, why don't you give a piece of Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to Israel? Our question is, if you have committed this huge crime, why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for this crime?
  • Source: Translation by CNN (Dec 2005) [1]

• If the Europeans are telling the truth in their claim that they have killed six million Jews in the Holocaust during the World War II - which seems they are right in their claim because they insist on it and arrest and imprison those who oppose it, why should the Palestinian nation pay for the crime. Why have they come to the very heart of the Islamic world and are committing crimes against the dear Palestine using their bombs, rockets, missiles and sanctions. [...] The same European countries have imposed the illegally-established Zionist regime on the oppressed nation of Palestine. If you have committed the crimes so give a piece of your land somewhere in Europe or America and Canada or Alaska to them to set up their own state there. Then the Iranian nation will have no objections, will stage no rallies on the Qods Day and will support your decision.
  • Source: Translation by Islamic Republic News Agency (Dec 2005) [2]

• The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world
  • Source: Worldpress.org [3]

• Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement.
  • Bold faced text was widely spread in news media as a call for the destruction of Israel
  • Source: Infomationclearinghouse.info [4] (Originally from ISNA and NY Times)

• Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury.
  • Source: CNN [5]

Ahmadinejad's letter to George W. Bush

The letter was the first direct communication between Iran and the US since a break of diplomatic ties in 1980. It lists greviences of the Iranian government and questions current and past US foreign policy (8 May 2006).

• Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ (PBUH)... and have countries attacked. The lives, reputations and possessions of people destroyed and on the slight chance of the presence of a few criminals in a village, city, or convoy for example, the entire village, city or convoy set ablaze.
  • Paragraph 2

• Or because of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country, it is occupied, around one hundred thousand people killed, its water sources, agriculture and industry destroyed, close to 180,000 foreign troops put on the ground, sanctity of private homes of citizens broken, and the country pushed back perhaps fifty years. At what price?... On the pretext of the existence of WMDs, this great tragedy came to engulf both the peoples of the occupied and the occupying country. Later it was revealed that no WMDs existed to begin with.
  • Paragraphs 3-4

• There are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that have not been tried, have no legal representation, their families cannot see them and are obviously kept in a strange land outside their own country. There is no international monitoring of their conditions and fate. No one knows whether they are prisoners, POWs, accused or criminals. European investigators have confirmed the existence of secret prisons in Europe too.
  • Paragraphs 6-7

• ...many questions about the phenomenon of Israel... Students are saying that sixty years ago such a country did not exist... I tell them to study the history of WWI and WWII. One of my students told me that during WWII, which more than tens of millions of people perished in, news about the war, was quickly disseminated by the warring parties. Each touted their victories and the most recent battlefront defeat of the other party. After the war they claimed that six million Jews had been killed. Six million people that were surely related to at least two million families. Again let us assume that these events are true. Does that logically translate into the establishment of the state of Israel in the Middle East or support for such a state? How can this phenomenon be rationalized or explained?
  • Paragraphs 8, 10-12

• Why is it that any technological and scientific achievement reached in the Middle East region is translated into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime? Is not scientific R&D one of the basic rights of nations?
  • Paragraph 20

• Don’t Latin Americans have the right to ask why their elected governments are being opposed and coup leaders supported? Poverty and hardship in large parts of Africa are preventing this from happening. Don’t they have the right to ask why their enormous wealth – including minerals – is being looted, despite the fact that they need it more than others?
  • Paragraph 23

• The brave and faithful people of Iran too have many questions and grievances, including: the coup d’etat of 1953 and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day, opposition to the Islamic revolution, transformation of an Embassy into a headquarters supporting the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic (many thousands of pages of documents corroborate this claim), support for Saddam in the war waged against Iran, the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane, freezing the assets of the Iranian nation, increasing threats, anger and displeasure vis-à-vis the scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation (just when all Iranians are jubilant and celebrating their country’s progress), and many other grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.
  • Paragraph 23

• Western media only intensified the climate of fear and insecurity
  • Paragraph 25

• Do you not think that if all of us come to believe in and abide by these principles, that is, monotheism, worship of God, justice, respect for the dignity of man, belief in the Last Day, we can overcome the present problems of the world

• I have been told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus (PBUH)

2006

• We thank God that our enemies are idiots. (6 February 2006) [6]

• They (Western countries) know that they are not capable of inflicting the slightest blow on the Iranian nation because they need the Iranian nation. They will suffer more and they are vulnerable. That is why if the Iranian nation and government steps back on nuclear energy today, the story will not end there and the Americans will make another pretext. (8 March 2006) [7]

Attributed

• America's unilateral move to sever ties with the Islamic Republic was aimed at destroying the Islamic revolution.

• We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy. ^{[citation needed]}

• There is no doubt that the new wave in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world. ^{[citation needed]}

Misattributed

• … the use of nuclear weapons is Iran's right.
  • CNN mistranslation of phrase in 14 January 2006 news conference
  • correct translation: "Iran has the right to nuclear energy."
  • "CNN allowed to resume work in Iran after apology", Reuters (via Yahoo! News), 17 January 2006

About Ahmadinejad

• Ahmadinejad was the only presidential candidate who talked against future relations with the United States. Also, in an interview with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting a few days before the elections, Ahmadinejad accused the United Nations of being "one-sided, stacked against the world of Islam."
  • Biography on Babnet Tunisia

• Current President of Iran, Populist, defender of the poorest, fighter against the capitalists and their American collaborators, the only hope for Iran against the American threat.
  • (link to a Fârsi text page - this needs more info: date and author)

• Those who insist on transferring the Iranian nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council have received an additional argument for doing so.
  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responding to the news of Ahmadinejad's comments that Israel should be "wiped of the map" "Iran leader's comments attacked" (27 October 2005) (BBC)

• [H]e is a fervent believer in the imminent reappearance of the 12th Imam, Shi'ism's version of the Messiah. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been reported as saying in official meetings that the end of history is only two or three years away. He reportedly told an associate that on the podium of the General Assembly last September, he felt a halo around him and for "those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink ... as if a hand was holding them there and it opened their eyes to receive" his message. He believes that the Islamic revolution's raison d'être is to prepare the way for the messianic redemption, which in his eschatology is preceded by worldwide upheaval and chaos. --Time Magazine: "Today Tehran, Tomorrow the World" March 2006

External links

• Brief biography (BBC)

• "Iran Leader Calls for Israel's Destruction"(AP) (26 October 2005)

Links:

• Source for some of the above quotes (in Persian)

de:Mahmūd Ahmadī-Nežād fa:محمود احمدی‌نژاد id:Mahmoud Ahmadinejad