[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 22301-22303]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, our American body politic is turning to a 
renewed examination of Iran, its government, and our relations with 
that country. It has become an important member of the OPEC oil-
producing cartel. Iran is also a state sponsor of terrorism and a 
leading voice for one part of Shia Islam.
  Recently, Iran elected a new president, a leader who replaced a 
moderate but ineffectual office holder who had presented Iran in a 
softer light, hiding a continuing policy of supporting terror and a 
nuclear program largely hidden from the view of the Nuclear 
Nonproliferation Treaty that Iran signed and the U.N. inspectors who 
enforced it.
  Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has presented an entirely 
new face for the government of Iran. We have heard various quotes by 
the Iranian president in news media sources, but nowhere have all of 
President Ahmadinejad's statements on key topics been presented in one 
place for a review by the American public and our allies. Recently, I 
asked the Congressional Research Service to compile a list entitled 
``Ahmadinejad In His Own Words'' and I present it to the House today. 
History can be a very good guide in informing us on the direction of 
countries, of movements of dictators. When we are well informed, we may 
see the warning signs of dangers ahead so that the American people, our 
government, and our allies can respond with the most effective and 
least costly policies to avoid a coming danger. Our past teaches us 
that we failed to see the coming danger from Germany and Japan, and 
that mistake led us into a very costly Second World War. Conversely, 
President Truman saw the threat of the Soviet Union, and his response, 
including the Marshall Plan, the Voice of America, and NATO, helped the 
United States avoid a third and costly world war.
  Our lessons teach us that tyrants or would-be tyrants often tell us 
what they are going to do long before they do it. And if we listen, if 
we truly listen, then the warnings that we are given can move us to 
action to avert a humanitarian crisis or even a future war involving 
the United States or our allies. President Ahmadinejad has been 
prolific on the subject of Israel, of Jews, and of the Holocaust.
  And who is this new president of Iran? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was born 
in Garmsar, southeast of Tehran in 1956. He is the fourth son of an 
Iranian iron worker who had seven children. He and his family migrated 
to Tehran when he was one year old. He got his diploma and was admitted 
to the University of Science and Technology in the field of civil 
engineering, where he ranked 130th among nationwide university entrance 
exams in 1975. He was accepted as an MS student at that same university 
and in 1986 got his doctorate in the field of engineering and traffic 
transportation and planning.
  Following the 1979 Iranian revolution, he became a member of the 
ultraconservative faction of the Office for Strengthening Unity. 
Between universities and theological seminaries, the OSU was 
established by Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, one of Khomeini's

[[Page 22302]]

key collaborators, to organize Islamist students against the rapidly 
growing Mojahedin-e Khalq. When the idea of storming the American 
embassy in Tehran was raised by Ahmadinejad's OSU, he also suggested 
storming the Soviet embassy as well.
  With the start of Iraq's war against Iran in 1980, Ahmadinejad rushed 
to the western fronts to fight against the enemy, and he volunteered to 
join the special forces of the Islamic Revolution's Guard Force in 
1986. He served in the Revolution Guards Corps in intelligence and 
security operation.
  Ahmadinejad was a senior officer in the Special Brigade of 
Revolutionary Guards stationed at the Ramazan Garrison near Kermanshah 
in western Iran. It was there at his headquarters of the Revolutionary 
Guards' extra
territorial operations that he helped mount attacks on Iran's borders. 
His work in the Revolutionary Guards was related to the suppression of 
dissidents in Iran and abroad, and he personally participated in covert 
operations in Iraq around the city of Kirkuk.
  With the formation of the elite Qods, Jerusalem, Force of the Iranian 
Revolutionary Guards, Ahmadinejad became one of its senior commanders. 
He directed assassinations in the Middle East and Europe, including the 
assassination of Iranian Kurdish leader Abdorrahman Qassemlou, who was 
shot dead by senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards at a Vienna 
apartment in July of 1989. Ahmadinejad was a key planner of that 
murder. He also is reported to have been involved in planning an 
attempt to assassinate author Salman Rushdie.
  Ahmadinejad served as a governor of Maku and Khoy cities in the 
northwestern West Azarbaijan province for 4 years in the 1980s, and he 
was an adviser to the governor general of the western province of 
Kurdistan for 2 years. While serving as a cultural adviser to then 
Ministry of Culture and Higher Education in 1983, he was appointed as 
governor general of the newly established province of Ardebil. He was 
elected as the exemplary governor general for three consecutive years, 
but in 1997 the newly installed Khatami moderate administration removed 
Ahmadinejad from his post as a governor general.
  Ahmadinejad returned to university to teach in 1997, and there he 
also became involved in the cultural and political work of Ansar-i 
Hizbullah, the Followers of the Party of God, a violent Islamic 
vigilante group.
  In April of 2003, Ahmadinejad was appointed the mayor of Tehran by 
the capital's municipal council, dominated by hard-line Islamic Iran 
Developers Coalition. As mayor, he reversed many of the policies of 
previous moderate and reformist mayors, placing serious and religious 
emphasis on the activities of cultural centers, turning them into 
prayer halls. He also closed fast-food restaurants and required all 
male employees to have beards and wear long sleeves. He instituted the 
separation of elevators for men and women in municipal offices and also 
suggested the burial of bodies of the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war in 
the major city squares of his capital, Tehran.
  Ahmadinejad was also a member of the hard-line Islamic Revolution 
Devotees' Society. While they endorsed another candidate in the 2005 
election, it was Ahmadinejad that emerged out of that flawed process, 
for it was during the elections in 2005 in Iran that thousands of 
moderate candidates were knocked off the ballot by Iran's ruling 
council of clerics. As one of the candidates still allowed to be on the 
ballot, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency on June 24, 2005.
  Now, since being elected the president of Iran, Ahmadinejad has left 
no doubt about his views on Jews, Israel, and the Holocaust. On October 
25, 2005, in advance of Iran's Jerusalem Day, established by Ayatollah 
Khomeini, he wrote at a conference for the Society Defense of the 
Palestinian Nation and Islamic Students Union. In his speech, he 
described his vision for an age-old confrontation between the world of 
Islam and, as he put it, the world of arrogance, that is the West, 
portraying Israel and Zionism as the spearhead of the West against the 
Islamic nation.
  He emphasized in that speech the need to eliminate Israel, which he 
said was an attainable goal. He delivered this speech before several 
representatives of Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and 
Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al.
  Speaking to a student conference entitled, ``A World Without 
Zionism,'' Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated: ``Very soon this stain that is 
Israel will vanish from the center of the Islamic world, and that is 
attainable. The people who sit in closed rooms cannot decide this 
matter. The Islamic people cannot allow this historic enemy to exist in 
the heart of the Islamic world. I hope that Palestinians will maintain 
their wariness and intelligence, much as they have pursued their 
battles in the last 10 years. This will be a brief period, and if we 
pass through it successfully, the process of eliminating the Zionist 
regime will be smooth and simple.

                              {time}  1630

  ``Our dear Imam Khomeini ordered that the occupying regime in 
Jerusalem be wiped off the face of the earth. This was a very wise 
statement.''
  On April 15, 2006, at the opening of a conference on supporting 
Palestinians he said, ``Like it or not, the Zionist regime is headed 
towards annihilation.''
  On April 27, 2006, he stated in a speech in the western Iranian town 
of Zanjan, carried on live state television, ``The regime in Israel 
will one day vanish.''
  On May 11, 2006, in a reference to Israel, in a speech to students 
and instructors at the University of Jakarta, ``I advise all of you to 
pack up and move out of the region before being caught in the fire they 
have started in Lebanon.''
  On July 8, 2006, speaking to regional officials at the opening of a 
two-day conference in Tehran on the security of Iraq he said, ``The 
basic problem in the Islamic world is the existence of the Zionist 
regime, and the Islamic world and the region must mobilize to remove 
this problem.''
  On July 29, 2006, during an emergency meeting with Muslim leaders he 
said, ``The real cure for the Lebanon conflict is the elimination of 
the Zionist regime, but there should be first an immediate cease-
fire.''
  On August 3, 2006, in a speech before the Organization of the Islamic 
Conference, to Presidents and Prime Ministers and policymakers of 17 
Muslim-majority nations in Malaysia, a major international conference, 
he said, ``The Zionist regime is fraudulent and illegitimate and cannot 
survive.''
  On October 19, 2006, speaking to crowds of people in Islamshahr, 
southwest of Tehran, he said, ``The regime in Israel will be gone, 
definitely. You,'' the western powers, ``should know that any 
government that stands by the Zionist regime from now on will not see 
any result but the hatred of people.''
  Earlier this year Congressman Steve Israel and I had lunch with 
Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. After a 
businesslike 20-minute discussion, the Ambassador for the Islamic 
Republic of Iran entered into a 30-minute monologue on how he believed 
the Holocaust in Europe had not happened.
  After about half an hour I interrupted the Ambassador and told him I 
was surprised that he used our time to discuss the Iranian nuclear 
nonproliferation commitment, under a treaty that Iran had signed, to 
instead discuss issues: number one, of which there was no significant 
debate about the Holocaust occurring; number two, on events happening 
over half a century ago; and number three, all occurring outside Iran.
  Iran's Ambassador said that his President had ordered him to deny the 
Holocaust. It was no accident. And on several occasions, we have seen 
President Ahmadinejad has tried to convince his people that indeed 
there was no Holocaust.
  On December 1, 2005, in a speech to thousands in the southeastern 
city of Zahedan in southeastern Sistan va Baluchistan Province, and 
this was carried on Iranian television, he said, ``Today, the Europeans 
have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and

[[Page 22303]]

consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets. If you 
committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian 
people pay the price? This is our proposal: If you committed the crime, 
then give part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or 
Alaska to them so the Jews can establish their country.''
  On April 24, 2006, at a press conference in Tehran, he said, ``Every 
German-born is indebted to the arrogant and greedy Zionists. Sixty 
years after the war, why do the Palestinians have to burn in the crimes 
of Zionists under the pretext of the Second World War.''
  And on December 8, 2005, speaking at a press conference on the 
sidelines of an Organization of the Islamic Conference antiterrorism 
summit in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, he said, ``Today, they have created a 
myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it to be above God, 
religion and the prophets. If you,'' Europeans ``committed this big 
crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian nation pay the price? 
You should pay the compensation yourself. This is our proposal: Give a 
part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to 
them so that the Jews can establish their country.''
  This is President Ahmadinejad in his own words that I place before 
the House, all accurately translated and provided in one place by the 
Congressional Research Service to present clearly a rising danger to 
our allies in Israel and to the West in general.
  Tomorrow we will see the results of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group 
report. This report is the work of serious men and women. It will lay 
out well thought out proposals for the United States in the Middle 
East.
  One proposal that it may contain is to increase our dialogue with 
Iran. Now we should always talk with every country and every leader, 
but we should have this dialogue with Iran in an informed way so our 
discussion is clearly led by knowing with whom we are speaking. We 
should not begin our dialogue with Iran from a position of ignorance as 
to what the president of Iran has already said to large crowds in 
published works and on their national television.
  What I have laid before the House this afternoon is Ahmadinejad in 
his own words, so that as we begin a new phase of U.S. relations in the 
Middle East, we begin by learning more and knowing about this man and 
what he believes and what he thinks he must do to the world.
  I was looking briefly at a recently translated quote by another 
leader who said, ``Why does the world shed crocodile tears over the 
richly merited fate of the small Jewish minority? What has happened to 
the conscience of the world when millions in Germany are suffering from 
hunger and misery? I ask the American people: Are you prepared to 
receive in your midst these well-poisoners of people and the universal 
spirit of Christianity?''
  It may sound like a recent speech from President Ahmadinejad. It was 
actually the works of Adolf Hitler published in the magazine 
Staatszeitung.
  Looking at these words, we have an eerie echo of the past, but 
potentially a warning of the future. I lay them before the House today 
so we see them all clearly for who this leader is, what he has stated 
publicly, and where he would like to take his Nation and its relation 
with his neighbors in the Middle East.
  I want to thank Peter Black, senior historian for the U.S. Holocaust 
Memorial Museum, and Greta Stults and Harold Edinger for their help in 
these translations.
  With that, we have laid Ahmadinejad, in his own words, before the 
House on this very special week for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle 
East.

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