Ahmadinejad: Iran fighting a righteous battle with evil forces

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad displayed an even more unorthodox interpretation of global events than usual in Istanbul last night, after narrowly escaping a political crisis at home.

In Istanbul on Monday, Ahmadinejad relished a different kind of attention, giving a wave and politician's locked smile, at the request of Turkish news photographers, which sent their cameras whirring.

Sitting to the president’s right was his controversial chief of staff and in-law Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, the focus of severe political attacks in Iran for “deviation” from revolutionary and religious tenets. He sat still on Monday night while Ahmadinejad pontificated, shifting only his eyes but not moving his head.

Refining anti-imperial and anti-Western themes that have threaded their way through Iranian discourse since the 1979 Islamic revolution – facing the "enemy" is never far from the lips of the leadership – Ahmadinejad let the rhetoric flow.

He said Iran was willing to reopen stalled talks with world powers about Iran's controversial nuclear program. But his sharp criticism of those very powers seemed to preempt any discussion.

"Wherever there is insecurity [around the globe], at least you can see one of the permanent members of the Security Council is playing a role there," said Ahmadinejad. "They are either the main factors or elements of these crises.... It is clearly evident that when a permanent member of the Security Council is going to interfere ... other countries can't play a role in dealing with the insecurity."

'I want to warn Obama'

Ahmadinejad again lambasted the US, one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, for what he called "wrong and one-sided information" about 9/11. "I want to warn Obama to learn from the experience of Bush, and he should immediately pull out from our region. If he commits such a big mistake, he would face a fate more shameful and doomed than Bush."

It has all been part of a bigger conspiracy, argued Ahmadinejad, aimed at Iran and the other victims of the post-World War II global order.

"They have been planning for 100 years to keep our nations underdeveloped and backward to continue their domination, so they don't want us to progress," said Ahmadinejad.

"The US is our enemy. They have announced their hostility for a few decades ... they are undertaking actions against us," the Iranian president said, without mentioning that in Iran anti-Americanism, flag burning, and chants of "Death to America" have been official parlance since 1979.

Global inequalities have become a "breeding ground of terrorism," said Ahmadinejad. "I firmly believe that all terrorist organizations are … being used as a tool by the capitalist system for the imposition of its own ambitions and policies.”

Casting doubt on Holocaust, bin Laden's death

Mixed among his complaints, Ahmadinejad continued to question the West's version of the Holocaust, suggesting – in reference to one of the most carefully examined episodes in history, during which six million European Jews lost their lives – that "others have never been allowed to study or conduct research works on this issue."

Likewise, the US “prevented” investigation about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Ahmadinejad charged: "They don't want us to know about the main perpetrators of that event."

The Iranian president did not hint at who he believed to be the real perpetrators, if not Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

But he did doubt that the US killed the Al Qaeda chief in Pakistan on May 1, even though Al Qaeda itself has confirmed bin Laden's death and vowed to avenge it. Ahmadinejad said on Monday that "no reliable source has yet confirmed or endorsed [the American] claims."