**Congressman Mark Steven Kirk**

**Special Order**

**Ahmadinejad in His Own Words**

**December 5, 2006**

Mr. Speaker: Our American body politic is turning to renewed examination
of Iran, its government, and our relations with that country. It has
become an important member of the OPEC oil producing cartel, a state
sponsor of terror, and a leading voice for one part of Shi'ia 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 Non-Proliferation 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, 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 present it to the House
today.

History can be a very good guide in informing us on the direction of
countries, of movements and dictators. When we are well-informed, we may
see warning signs of dangers ahead so that the American people, her
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 to 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 costly struggle.

Our lessons teach us that tyrants or would-be tyrants often tell us what
they are going to do long before they do it. If we listen, if we truly
listen, then the warnings 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, Jews, and the Holocaust. And who is the new President of Iran?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was born in Garmsar, southeast of Tehran in 1956. He
is the fourth son of an Iranian ironworker 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 after where he ranked 130th in the
nationwide university entrance exams in 1975. He was accepted as an MS
student at the same university. And in 1986 and got his doctorate in
1987 in the field of engineering and traffic transportation planning.

Following the 1979 Islamic revolution, he became a member the
ultra-conservative faction of the Office for Strengthening Unity.
Between Universities and Theological Seminaries, the OSU was established
by Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, one of Khomeini's 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 the Iraq war in 1980, Ahmadinejad rushed to the
western fronts to fight against the enemy, he volunteered to join
special forces of the Islamic Revolution\'s Guards Corps (IRGC) in 1986.
He served in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps intelligence and
security operations.

Ahmadinejad was a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the
Revolutionary Guards, stationed at Ramazan Garrison near Kermanshah in
western Iran. This was the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards'
\"Extra-territorial Operations\" -- then he helped mount attacks beyond
Iran's borders. His work in the Revolutionary Guards was related to
suppression of dissidents in Iran and abroad. And he personally
participated in covert operations in Iraqi, 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 1989. Ahmadinejad was a key planner of that murder. He
also is reportedly to have been involved in planning an attempt to
assassinate author Salman Rushdie.

Ahmadinejad served as governor of Maku and Khoy cities in the
northwestern West Azarbaijan province for four years in the 1980 and as
an advisor to the governor general of the western province of Kurdestan
for two years. While serving as the cultural advisor to then Ministry of
Culture and Higher Education in 1993, 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 with the cultural and political work of Ansar-i
Hizbullah, the Followers of the Party of God, a violent Islamic
vigilante group.

In April 2003, Ahmadinejad was appointed mayor of Tehran by the
capital\'s municipal council, dominated by the hard-line Islamic Iran
Developers Coalition.

As mayor, he reversed many of the policies of previous moderate and
reformist mayors, placing serious religious emphasis on the activities
of cultural centers by turning them into prayer halls. He also closed
fast-food restaurants and required male city employees to have beards
and wear long sleeves. He instituted the separation of elevators for men
and women in the municipal offices. He also suggested the burial of the
bodies of martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war in major city squares of Tehran.

Ahmadinejad was a member of the central council of the hard-line Islamic
Revolution Devotees\' Society. While they endorsed another candidate in
the 2005 election, it was Ahmadinejad that emerged from the flawed
process.

During the election of 2005 in Iran, 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.

Since being elected President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has left no
doubt about his views on Jews, Israel, and the Holocaust:

On October 26, 2005, in advance of Iran\'s Jerusalem Day, established by
Ayatollah Khomeini he spoke at a conference of the Society for the
Defense of the Palestinian Nation, and members of the Islamic Students
Union, and an audience of hundreds of students.

In his speech, he described his vision of an age-old confrontation
between the world of Islam and 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 Hizbullah and
its leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Khaled Mash\'al.

Speaking to a student conference then, entitled \"World without
Zionism,\" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated:

*"Very soon this stain of disgrace (i.e. Israel) will vanish from the
center of the Islamic world -- and this is attainable...*

*The people who sit in closed rooms cannot decide on this matter. The
Islamic people cannot allow this historic enemy to exist in the heart of
the Islamic world...*

*I hope that the Palestinians will maintain their wariness and
intelligence, much as they have pursued their battles in the past ten
years. This will be a short period, and if we pass though it
successfully, the process of the elimination of the Zionist regime will
be smooth and simple...*

*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 the
Palestinians, he said:

*"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation."*

On April 27, 2006, he stated in a speech in the western Iranian town of
Zanjan, carried on live national television.

*\"This regime (Israel) will one day vanish*.\"

On May 11, 2006, Ahmadinejad made a reference to Israel in a speech to
students and instructors at University of Jakarta, he said:

*\"I advise them 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 security in 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 elimination of the
Zionist regime, but there should be first an immediate ceasefire.\"*

On August 3, 2006, in a speech before the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, to presidents, prime ministers and policy-makers 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:

*"This regime will be gone, definitely. You should know that any
government that stands by the Zionist regime from now on will not see
any result but the hatred of the people."*

Earlier this year, Congressman Steve Israel and I had lunch with Iran's
Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. After a business-like
twenty minute discussion, the Ambassador from the Islamic Republic of
Iran entered into a thirty-minute monologue on how he believed the
Holocaust in Europe had not happened. After about a half-an-hour, I
interrupted the Ambassador and told him that I was surprised that he
used our time to discuss the Iranian nuclear non-proliferation
commitment under the treaty they signed instead to discuss issues which:

1)  There was no significant debate about the Holocaust occurring,

2)  On events happening over half a century ago, and

3)  All happening outside Iran.

Iran's Ambassador said his president had ordered him to deny the
Holocaust. It was no accident. And on several occasions, we have seen
President Ahmadinejad had tried to convince his people that there was no
Holocaust.

On December 12, 2005 , in a speech to thousands in the southeastern city
of Zahedan in the southeastern Sistan va Baluchistan Province and this
was carried on Iranian television, Ahmadinejad said:

*\"Today, they (Europeans) have created a myth in the name of Holocaust
and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets\.... If you
committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian
nation pay the price?\... This is our proposal: If you committed the
crime, then 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."*

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 Palestinian people 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 anti-terrorism summit in
Mecca, Saudi Arabia, he said:

*\"Today, they have created a myth in the name of 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 have to 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 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 upgrade our dialogue with Iran.
We should always talk to every country and every leader. But we should
have dialogue with Iran in an informed way so that our discussion is
clearly led by knowing with whom we are speaking. We should not begin
our dialogue with Iran rom a position of ignorance as to what the
President of Iran has already said -- to large crowds, in published
works, and on his 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, 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.
He said:

*"Why does the world shed crocodile's tears over the richly merited fate
of a small Jewish minority? But what happened to the conscience of the
world when millions in Germany were suffering from hunger and misery? I
ask Roosevelt, I ask the American people: Are you prepared to receive in
your midst these well-poisoners of the German people and the universal
spirit of Christianity?"*

It may sound like a recent speech from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was
actually the works of Adolf Hitler from the magazine Staatszeitung.
Looking at these words we have an eerie echo of the past, and
potentially a warning of the future. I lay them before the House today
so that 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 at the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum and Greta Stultz and Herald Edinger for their help with
translations. I also want to thank Hussein Hassan from the Congressional
Research Service, and Jeffrey Phillips from my staff for their
assistance.

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.

With that Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.