Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is coming to New York again next week for the annual opening of the U.N. General Assembly. If the past is any guide, he will try to use the U.S. press as a prop to distract from his shaky standing at home.
Since he was first elected in 2005, the Iranian president has perfected the art of slipping and sliding around even the most seasoned interviewers. Typically, he answers questions with questions and deflects criticism by attacking the United States or Israel.
On previous trips, Ahmadinejad has insisted that Iran has “real elections” — despite copious evidence to the contrary — and that Iran’s economy does “not face serious problems,” unlike the U.S. economy (another dubious assertion).
Reporters need to be armed with in-depth knowledge of Iran’s economy, politics, and society — and even then they may have difficulty getting Ahmadinejad to admit the truth. When I first interviewed him in 2006, he simply >>>
