Lie to me

In Islam it is expected | Mindy Belz

Alireza Sotakbar/ISNA/AP

Pity the broadcast journalists. Just this once. They bend earnestly forward to ask questions of the Iranian president, enunciating as though he were hard of hearing—Charlie Rose, Brian Williams, Scott Pelley, George Stephanopoulos, Mike Wallace—and he shreds them.

He says calmly that he is only interested in "the scientific approach" to whether or not the Holocaust happened. Returning question with question, he asks, "Did the Palestinians have anything to do with it?" and wonders why they must be "destroyed today under the pretext of the Holocaust."

To another he states, "I am not anti-Jewish at all," then goes on to explain that Israelis are not Jews ("but a bunch of corrupt criminals who abuse the name of Judaism"). Questioned about Iran's nuclear program, he says nuclear weapons are "outdated" and "useless" and asks (again, question for question) whether possessing nuclear weapons ever kept the Soviet Union from collapsing.