Iran’s president is in the United States to speak this afternoon before the United Nations General Assembly. In a speech Monday at Columbia University, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad painted his nation as a seeker of peace with no ill intentions against America or Israel. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says whatever Iran’s president is trying to sell, he’s not buying it.
Grassley says, "He should follow the U.N. sanctions and denounce any intention of him or his country doing anything with nuclear warfare and he hasn’t done that yet." Grassley says there have been several U.N. resolutions passed to deal with Iran and that country’s hostile tactics, but the efforts to contain the acts of warfare have been unsuccessful.
"They seem to always negotiate but Iran tends to string along and then the countries of Europe have been willing to be suckered into following along and stringing along that Iran does. Eventually, it ends up in the U.N. and now may be the last year," Grassley says.
Grassley says Ahmadinejad has been given a forum and "he’s taking advantage of academic freedom in the United States…not to discuss things in an intellectually honest way, but it gives him a forum back in his country to overcome some political opposition he might have had and also to enhance his position as a leader of the Muslim world to take on the United States."
Grassley says: "The U.N. has put certain deadlines in place for Iran. They have not abided by them and consequently, I’m not going to be satisfied with him speaking at Columbia. I think Columbia should not have given him a platform." During the speech at Columbia, Ahmadinejad questioned who carried out the attacks of Nine-Eleven and defended Holocaust revisionists. President Bush is also expected to address the U.N. today, focusing on human rights. Bush is to speak prior to Ahmadinejad.