Iranian Leader Opens Up
Ahmadinejad Speaks Candidly With Mike Wallace About Israel, Nukes, Bush
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Play CBS Video Video Ahmadinejad's Message For Bush After not hearing back from the White House about his 18-page letter three months ago, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a message for President Bush. Mike Wallace reports.
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Video Can Iran & U.S. Renew Ties? Asked whether or not Iran wanted to resume relations with the U.S. after more than two decades, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tells Mike Wallace what he thinks about re-establishing ties.
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Video Iran's Pres. On Nukes & Israel Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks to Mike Wallace about several hot-topic issues such as the country's nuclear program, the war in Iraq and what he personally thinks about Israel.
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Mike Wallace interviews Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Presidential Palace in Tehran on Tuesday, August 8, 2006. (CBS)
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Fast Facts Iran Learn about the people, economy and history.
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Interactive Iran Hostage Crisis Look back at the 444-day Iran hostage crisis, which began on Nov. 4, 1979.
"I am told that your revolutionary guards, Mr. President, are taking bombs, those - those roadside bombs - the IED's into Iraq. And what they are doing is furnishing the insurgents in Iraq with the kind of material that can kill U.S. soldiers. Why would you want to do that?" Wallace asked.
"Well, we are very saddened that the people of Iraq are being killed," Ahmadinejad replied. "I believe that the rulers of the U.S. have to change their mentality. I ask you, sir, what is the American army doing inside Iraq? Iraq has a government, a parliament. Iraq is - has a civilized nation with a long history of civilization. These are people we're dealing with."
Asked if he thinks Saddam Hussein was a civilized, reasonable, leader and whether the United States was wrong about going into Iraq, Ahmadinejad said: "Well, Saddam's story has been finished for close to three years, I would say. He belongs in the past. … And the Americans are openly saying that 'We are here for the long run,' in Iraq that is. So, a question for you, according to international law, the responsibility of providing security rests on the shoulder of the occupying, rather army. So, I ask them why are not - why are they not providing security?"
Instead of security, he says the United States is oppressing Iraq, and instead of calling the United States, "the great Satan," as the Ayatollah Khomeini did, Ahmadinejad calls the United States "the great oppressor."
"We are opposed to oppression," the president told Wallace. "We support whoever is victimized and oppressed even the oppressed people of the U.S."
A senior European diplomat in Tehran told Wallace that Iran's president feels the United States should be confronted in Iraq - and around the world - because he truly believes that the U.S. government is against Islam, and the developing world, that America keeps pushing Iran and other countries around, and he is determined to push back.
The Bush administration paints Iran's president as America's mortal enemy - as a man who wants nuclear weapons and supports Islamic terrorists. For his part, President Ahmadinejad views the United States as his major adversary.
He's the son of a blacksmith; was a commando during the Iran-Iraq war; has a Ph.D. in civil engineering, and became president a year ago by running as a populist man of the people. He is savvy, self-assured and self-righteous, but he rarely gives interviews to American journalists. His last U.S. newspaper interview was six months ago in USA Today.
But he sat down with 60 Minutes because he wanted to speak directly to the American people - and to President Bush.
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