Leading off the season premiere of 60 Minutes tonight, Scott Pelley interviewed the president of Iran. The interview occurred Thursday in Tehran, just as the news about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s desire to visit ground zero was breaking here in the U.S. Ahmadinejad will be in New York this week for the U.N. General Assembly.
Toward the end of the segment, the Iranian president joked that the discussion was turning into more of an interrogation than an interview:
Pelley: “but when I ask you a question as direct as ‘will you pledge not to test a nuclear weapon?’ you act…you dance all around the question. You never say ‘yes,’ you never say ‘no.'”
Ahmadinejad: “well, thank you for that. You are like a CIA investigator and…”
Pelley: “I Am Just A Reporter. I Am A Simple, Average American Reporter.”
Ahmadinejad: “This is not Guantanamo Bay. This is not a Baghdad prison. This is not a secret prison in Europe. This is not Abu Ghraib this is Iran. I’m the president of this country!”Advertisement