Iran Video: Ahmadinejad with NBC News on "Muslims", "Zionists", & Obama (15 September)
Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 10:00
President Ahmadinejad is off to the United Nations for his annual presentation to the General Assembly, so that means another round of interviews with US television networks.
It's a low-risk strategy for Ahmadinejad, as the American interviewers do not usually bring more than two-dimensional questions, and this encounter with NBC News' Andrea Mitchell was no different. Rather than pushing the President on Iran's internal matters, Mitchell settled for a snapshot of the case of the three US hikers --- Ahmadinejad had released Sarah Shourd on "compassionate grounds" but was defiant over the continued imprisonment of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal --- and got into a tangential discussion on the proposed Islamic cultural centre in New York and a general overview of President Obama and US politics. Ahmadinejad countered with assertions of Muslim goodwill (and thus his own) --- "Muslims do not hate Americans" --- while saying that a "Zionist minority" was limiting the President's options on US-Iranian relations.