Iranian President Ahmadinejad: The Americans Make Genghis Khan and Nero Look Like Saints

Following are excerpts from a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which aired on the Iranian News Channel on June 8, 2006.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: [The Americans] said they have come here to guarantee human rights - equal rights for all human beings. But those claiming to protect human rights have their arms submerged up to their elbows in oppression, crime, torture, and injustice. The prisons they have established in Guantanamo, Abu Ghuraib, in the heart of Europe, and in the countries under their control make even Genghis Khan and Nero look like saints. As you can see, they are perpetrating in the name of human rights, the worst tortures of the Middle Ages, in full view of the cameras.

We believe that in recent decades, several Western countries have been acting with egotism and a hunger for power, in a unilateral manner, and have violated the rights of the peoples, forcing upon the world an atmosphere of insecurity, threats, and discrimination. They caused many wars and crimes. They caused resentment, rifts, and hatred.

Today, they face an historic choice. They have only two options. On option is to surrender to justice and the culture of justice, to abandon their arrogance, their hunger for power, and their aggression, and strive, together with the peoples, for peace and security worldwide. If they don't, they will soon face the powerful slap of the peoples who have arisen, and they will have to abandon the international scene, and roll into the corners of isolation.

[...]

Any hand that wishes to split the united ranks of the people is not the hand of the Iranian people. It is the hand of foreigners, and the strong hand of the people must chop it off.