In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Links: Ahmadinejad's New York itinerary
Reference Material: The World Leaders' Forum at Columbia
Reactions: Ahmadinejad and the presidential candidates
Opinion: Ahmadinejad at Columbia
Opinion: Ahmadinejad at Ground Zero
Background: Ahmadinejad's outspoken career as president
Key Players: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Related Links: Iran's UN ambassador
History: Past controversial visitors to the UN
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Iranian President Rattles New York
by
findingDulcinea Staff
New York City rejects President Ahmadinejad’s request to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center, and protests greet his appearance at Columbia University, as he arrives to discuss Iran’s nuclear program.
30-Second Summary
Presidential candidates of both stripes quickly denounced the proposed visit to Ground Zero when the possibility was raised on Sept. 19. The next day, editorials in The New York Post and The New York Sun vehemently attacked the Iranian leader's suggestion.
Five days later, protesters gathered at the Columbia University campus, where Ahmadinejad was due to speak. Prior to his engagement there, The New York Sun reported that state lawmakers had talked of withholding funding from the university in response to its hosting the Iranian president.
The anger attendant on Ahmadinejad’s arrival has a number of causes. In the last two years, he has declared the Holocaust a “myth” and said that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” Also, the United States suspects Tehran of aiding insurgents in Iraq.
Then there is the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, which Ahmadinejad came to New York to discuss at the United Nations.
Considering Ahmadinejad’s record, Columbia’s invitation was sure to be controversial. After much criticism in the press, President Lee C. Bollinger chose to deliver a harsh rebuke to Ahmadinejad at the start of the event. "Mr. President," Bollinger said, "you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator."
Those words will not have satisfied all of Bollinger’s critics, as exemplified by Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal. Stephens wrote that Columbia’s conviction that the university was confronting Iran's leadership was naïve; "a bit like suggesting that one 'confronts' a wild animal by staring at it through its cage at a zoo.”
Five days later, protesters gathered at the Columbia University campus, where Ahmadinejad was due to speak. Prior to his engagement there, The New York Sun reported that state lawmakers had talked of withholding funding from the university in response to its hosting the Iranian president.
The anger attendant on Ahmadinejad’s arrival has a number of causes. In the last two years, he has declared the Holocaust a “myth” and said that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” Also, the United States suspects Tehran of aiding insurgents in Iraq.
Then there is the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, which Ahmadinejad came to New York to discuss at the United Nations.
Considering Ahmadinejad’s record, Columbia’s invitation was sure to be controversial. After much criticism in the press, President Lee C. Bollinger chose to deliver a harsh rebuke to Ahmadinejad at the start of the event. "Mr. President," Bollinger said, "you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator."
Those words will not have satisfied all of Bollinger’s critics, as exemplified by Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal. Stephens wrote that Columbia’s conviction that the university was confronting Iran's leadership was naïve; "a bit like suggesting that one 'confronts' a wild animal by staring at it through its cage at a zoo.”
Headline Links: Ahmadinejad's New York itinerary
President Ahmadinejad arrives in New York on Sunday, September 23, speaks at the UN the next day, and leaves on Wednesday. On Monday, he will also speak at Columbia University’s world forum, an engagement that has been another source of controversy.
Source: The New York Times
On the day of the Iranian president’s appearance at Columbia University, The New York Sun reported that city lawmakers may withhold state funds from the university to protest its hosting Ahmadinejad.
Source: The New York Sun
Although Ahmadinejad's platform at Columbia sparked controversy, CBS aired an interview with the Iranian president on "60 Minutes," on September 23, without raising any objections from the press or politicians. Asked why he would choose to insult Americans by visiting the World Trade Center, the Iranian president expressed disbelief. “Why should it be insulting?” he said. He went on to say, “Usually you go to these sites to pay your respects. And also to perhaps air your views about the root causes of such incidents.”
Source: CBS News
During his speech, Ahmadinejad denied that his country was developing a nuclear weapon, and accused Western nations of hypocrisy in their attempts to block the Iranian nuclear program. “If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and are testing them already,” he said, “who are you to question other people who just want nuclear power.”
Source: New York Times
Reference Material: The World Leaders' Forum at Columbia
“In universities,” said Columbia President Bollinger, in his introduction to his event, “we have a deep and almost single-minded commitment to pursue the truth. We do not have access to the levers of power. We cannot make war or peace. We can only make minds. And to do this we must have the most full freedom of inquiry.” A transcript and a video link for the Ahmadinejad event are available at the Columbia Web site.
Source: Columbia University
Reactions: Ahmadinejad and the presidential candidates
Arabic-language news agency Al Jazeera quoted a response from the spokesman for the Iranian mission to the UN: “President Ahmadinejad intended to lay a wreath at the site of ground zero [sic] in order to pay tribute to the victims of the terrorists attack [sic] of September 11, 2001. We are hopeful that we can still work something out with the police department.”
Source: Al Jazeera
A New York Times blog provides a summary of the reactions of presidential candidates to the proposed visit. Romney prescribes a “vehement no”; Clinton says it is “unacceptable”; Giuliani describes the idea as “outrageous”
Source: The Caucus
Opinion: Ahmadinejad at Columbia
Pro-Columbia
Those who have spoken out against Columbia’s decision to invite Ahmadinejad to speak, such as Mitt Romney and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I–Conn.), “not only disrespect such core American principles as academic freedom and freedom of speech,” argues The LA Times, “they disrespect the intelligence of Ahmadinejad’s audience.” The Iranian leader may well have “had a hostile crowd at Columbia University laughing and applauding,” but the “audience was mostly laughing at him rather than with him.”
Source: The LA Times
Contra-Columbia
While Columbia has defended its right to let Ahmadinejad speak at its World Leaders Forum, a group of Stanford academics have attacked their university’s decision to award Donald Rumsfeld a fellowship at the Hoover Institution, a conservative research center. The petition calls for the fellowship offer to be withdrawn and describes Rumsfeld as “fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, [and] disinterested inquiry.” In the opinion of The Wall Street Journal, the contrast this petition makes with the invitation extended to Iran’s leader confirms “that the modern academy’s commitment to ‘intellectual freedom’ too often fails to distinguish between those who defend freedom and those who would squash it.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal (paid subscription may be required)
Bret Stephens argues that the Columbia academics who have defended their university's decision to host the Iranian president have made the classic liberal mistake of believing that reason is an adequate weapon when dealing with an unreasonable enemy. “To suggest that such an event amounts to a confrontation, or offers a perspective on reality,” Stephens writes, “is a bit like suggesting that one ‘confronts’ a wild animal by staring at it through its cage at a zoo.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal (paid subscription may be required)
Opinion: Ahmadinejad at Ground Zero
Counseling restraint
According to Time, Ahmadinejad’s request to lay a wreath at the WTC site “is a transparently political stunt, aimed at the audience back home.” That deduction is based at least in part on the fact that the Iranian leader expressed no interest in visiting the site when speaking to Time on his previous visit. The invective and anger Ahmadinejad has prompted is counterproductive, argues Time, in that it allows him “to tell his fellow Iranians: ‘Look, I tried to be a nice guy, I wanted to lay a wreath on Ground Zero, but these Americans don’t appreciate our compassion.’”
Source: Time magazine
Ms. Breitweiser, 9//11 widow and activist, writes of her dismay at the “pack mentality” of journalists and politicians competing to register their outrage at Ahmadinejad’s suggestion. She argues that the presidential candidates could have demonstrated real statesmanship by requesting to meet the Iranian leader at Ground Zero to open a “real dialog.” To posit that Ahmadinejad might be transformed by that visit might be “naïve,” she observes, but such an event “could provide a first step toward forging a new relationship with Iran.”
Source: Kristen Breitweiser
A blogger who goes by the nom de plume The Anonymous Liberal, who says he is a litigator at a large national law firm, recommends calm rather than outrage. “Look, I realize Ahmadinejad is not a good guy,” writes the Anonymous Liberal. “[But] it’s not as if Ahmadinejad or Iran had anything to do with 9/11 … Moreover, don’t we want Muslim leaders to acknowledge the tragedy of 9/11?”
Source: The Anonymous Liberal
James Carroll reflects that Iran was one of the first nations to express its condolences after 9/11, and that the military campaign against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was supported by Tehran. Carroll argues that refusing Ahmadinejad’s request “reinforces him at home,” and that this action is emblematic of the way George W. Bush “transformed Ground Zero from a site toward which the world looked with empathy for American pain into a hypernationalistic symbol of singularly American victimhood.”
Source: The Boston Globe
In “Our View on Ahmadinejad in New York,” USA Today argues that by allowing the Iranian leader to appear at Columbia, the university will be teaching him a useful lesson in two pillars of American democracy: the right to free speech, and the right to peaceful protest. Ahmadinejad is not likely to heed such a lesson, but “the most important message is in the event itself.” USA Today does not condone the president’s proposal to visit the World Trade Center. “Iran was not behind the 9/11 attacks,” USA Today writes. “Nonetheless, Ahmadinejad’s government supports terrorism and supports anti-America fighters in Iraq.”
Source: USA Today
Zero Tolerance
The idea of Ahmadinejad visiting the World Trade Center site was “an offensive absurdity, a provocation,” according to a front-page New York Sun editorial. The Sun recounts its view of how events transpired after Iranian officials made their president’s wish known. “New Yorkers can thank three persons,” writes the Sun, lauding the trio it identifies with blocking Ahmadinejad’s plan, “the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly; Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Gillerman, and Matt Drudge.”
Source: The New York Sun
The New York Post differs from The New York Times and The New York Sun in foregrounding New York Mayor Bloomberg as the chief actor preventing the Iranian president’s visit to Ground Zero. The other papers traced the decision to Police Commissioner Kelly. The Post asks why Bloomberg “felt obliged to couch the refusal in limp diplomatic terms,” by saying that permission was withheld because Ground Zero is under construction. The Post contrasts this decision with “the night in 1995 when Rudy Giuliani had Yasser Arafat tossed on his Keister out of Lincoln Center.”
Source: The New York Post
Background: Ahmadinejad's outspoken career as president
May '06 letter to Bush
President Ahmadinejad wrote an eight-page letter to George Bush. He discussed several issues, including the attacks on the World Trade Center. The Iranian president described 9/11 as a “horrendous incident,” writing that the killing of innocent people was “deplorable.”
The letter also implied that the U.S. government had been involved in a cover-up regarding the atrocity: “Why have various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And why aren’t those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?”
President Ahmadinejad wrote an eight-page letter to George Bush. He discussed several issues, including the attacks on the World Trade Center. The Iranian president described 9/11 as a “horrendous incident,” writing that the killing of innocent people was “deplorable.”
The letter also implied that the U.S. government had been involved in a cover-up regarding the atrocity: “Why have various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And why aren’t those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?”
The letter was described as the first direct communication from an Iranian leader to a U.S. president.
Source: The International Herald Tribune
The full text of the letter is available online.
Source: The Council on Foreign Relations
Ahmadinejad's December '05 speech
An Iranian news agency reported that Ahmadinejad gave a speech describing the Holocaust, in which the German Nazis killed six million Jews, as a “myth.”
An Iranian news agency reported that Ahmadinejad gave a speech describing the Holocaust, in which the German Nazis killed six million Jews, as a “myth.”
In that speech, Ahmadinejad suggested that Israel be moved to Europe, the United States, Canada, or Alaska. “They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions, and the prophets,” he said.
Source: CNN
The United Nations condemned Ahmadinejad’s speech as being in contravention of the United Nations Charter. According to the document, all member nations, such as Iran, must “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
Source: CNN
Ahmadinejad's October '05 speech
Speaking in Tehran at a program called “The World Without Zionism,” Ahmadinejad declared that Israel should be "wiped off the map."
Speaking in Tehran at a program called “The World Without Zionism,” Ahmadinejad declared that Israel should be "wiped off the map."
The Iranian press agency ISNA reported the Iranian president’s comments: “The establishment of Zionist regime [sic] was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world.”
Source: The International Herald Tribune
Key Players: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
In a June 2006 story, The Washington Post reported that ordinary Iranians view their president as an accessible, caring man of the people. “If his image in the West is that of a banty radical dangerously out of touch with reality,” writes the Post, “the prevailing impression in Iran is precisely the opposite.”
Source: The Washington Post
The BBC profile of the Iranian president notes that there “has been confusion about his role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.” A number of the Americans who were held hostage at the U.S. Embassy have identified Ahmadinejad as one of the men who held them prisoner. Ahmadinejad has denied involvement, as have his fellow hostage-takers, who are now his staunch political opponents. As a point of interest, the United States has denied a visa to the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN because Ali Reza Moaiyeri was involved in the 1979 hostage-taking. The ambassador was to have accompanied Ahmadinejad on his trip to New York (see "related links" section).
Source: The BBC
The LA Times observes that Ahmadinejad has transcended the ethnic divisions of the Middle East to win admiration among many diverse Muslim nations. “What's striking,” Jeffrey Fleishman writes, “is that the leader of a non-Arab Shiite nation has ingratiated himself with the Middle East’s predominantly Sunni Arab population.”
Source: The LA Times
Related Links: Iran's UN ambassador
On September 19, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations was denied an entry visa to the United States on account of his having been involved in the 1979 hostage crisis. According to The International Herald Tribune, it is not clear what role Ali Reza Moaiyeri played in that event. “The UN official who said Moaiyeri’s visa was denied spoke on condition of anonymity because there has been no public announcement.”
Source: The International Herald Tribune
History: Past controversial visitors to the UN
Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev once banged his shoe on a UN desk, PLO leader Yasser Arafat attended wearing an empty holster, and Hugo Chavez called President Bush “the devil” from a UN podium. USA Today considers Ahmadinejad’s visit in the light of previous purveyors of grandstanding tactics and fiery rhetoric at the United Nations.
Source: USA Today
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