New York – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended Holocaust revisionists and raised questions about who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in a tense showdown Monday at Columbia University, where the school’s head introduced the hard-line leader by calling him a “petty and cruel dictator.”
Ahmadinejad portrayed himself as an intellectual and argued that his administration respected reason and science. But the former engineering professor, appearing shaken and irate over what he called “insults” from his host, soon found himself drawn into the type of rhetoric that has alienated American audiences in the past.
He provoked derisive laughter by responding to a question about Iran’s execution of homosexuals by saying: “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. … I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.”
Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, set the combative tone in his introduction of Ahmadinejad: “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.”
Ahmadinejad retorted that Bollinger’s opening was “an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here.”
Ahmadinejad drew applause at times, such as when he bemoaned the plight of the Palestinians. But he often declined to offer the simple answers the audience sought, responding instead with his own questions or long statements about history and justice.
Ahmadinejad has in the past called for Israel’s elimination, but when asked by an audience member if Iran sought the destruction of Israel, Ahmadinejad did not answer directly.
“We are friends of all the nations,” he said. “We are friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security.”
He also said Palestinians must determine their own future.
Ahmadinejad’s past statements about the Holocaust were soundly attacked by Bollinger, but Ahmadinejad denied he had questioned whether the Holocaust occurred: “Granted this happened; what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?”
He went on to say that he was defending the rights of European academics imprisoned for “questioning certain aspects” of the Holocaust, an apparent reference to a small number who have been prosecuted under national laws for denying or minimizing the genocide.
He said the Holocaust has been abused as a justification for Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians.
“Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?” he asked.
Asked why he had asked to visit the World Trade Center site – a request denied by New York authorities – Ahmadinejad said he wanted to express sympathy for the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. Then he appeared to question whether al-Qaeda was responsible, saying more research was needed.
“If the root causes of 9/11 are examined properly – why it happened, what caused it, what were the conditions that led to it, who truly was involved, who was really involved – and put it all together to understand how to prevent the crisis in Iraq, fix the problem in Afghanistan and Iraq combined,” Ahmadinejad said.
Bollinger drew strong criticism for inviting Ahmadinejad to Columbia and had promised tough questions in his introduction. But the stridency of his attack on the Iranian leader took many by surprise.
“You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated,” Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader’s Holocaust denial. “Will you cease this outrage?”
Instead of addressing most of Bollinger’s accusations directly, Ahmadinejad offered quotes from the Koran and criticism of the Bush administration and past American governments, from warrantless wiretapping to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
President Bush said Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia “speaks volumes about, really, the greatness of America.”
He told Fox News Channel that if Bollinger considered Ahmadinejad’s visit an educational experience for Columbia students, “I guess it’s OK with me.”
But conservatives on Capitol Hill were critical. Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, said he thought the invitation to Ahmadinejad was a mistake “because he comes literally with blood on his hands.”
Thousands of people jammed two blocks of 47th Street across from the United Nations to protest Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly session. He is to speak there today. Organizers claimed a turnout of tens of thousands. Police did not immediately have a crowd estimate.
