Ahmadinejad: US used 9/11 attacks to start wars

Iranian president says US gov't used terror attacks as pretext for invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan which have caused "more than 1 million" casualties.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 311 (photo credit: MCT)
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 311
(photo credit: MCT)
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the Sept. 11 attacks was part of a "complicated game planned to influence the human community," and was a "pretext" for the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively, Iranian Press TV reported Sunday.
The Iranian president, speaking at the Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly in Tehran, noted that the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in the casualties of "more than one million people."
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The Ahl al-Bayt convention, which opened Sunday with the Islamic Republic president's address, was meant to be a platform for discussing regional developments, as well as the "wave of Islamic Awakening," Press TV said.
This was not the first time that Ahmadinejad has raised suspicions that 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York that resulted in the deaths of 3,000 people were part of a hidden US government plan, or at least used as a pretext for the US invasions in the Middle East and Central Asia.
In 2008, BBC quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in a speech in Qom that while "a building collapsed and they said 3,000 people had been killed [they] never published their names," adding that event in New York was "suspect."
In that speech, the Iranian president also said the US used the attack as a "pretext" for wars that resulted in the deaths of a "million people."
In 2010, the Iranian president used the United Nations as a platform to raise his suspicions, saying that most of the world believed the US government was behind the terror attacks in order protect Israel, MSNBC reported.