Following are excerpts from an interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which aired on Channel 1, Iranian TV on December 2, 2008.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The events of 9/11 were dubious. They served as a pretext to attack Iraq. In fact, the attack against Iraq was a cure, or a pain-killer, for the ailing U.S. economy.

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Ahmadinejad: The pressure they exert on Afghanistan and Pakistan mainly targets India and China.

Interviewer: These are their strategic targets?

Ahmadinejad: In my opinion, yes. Otherwise, their presence in Afghanistan would yield nothing but expenses for them. They do not gain anything from it. Apart from exerting pressure on people and making them suffer, they do not benefit from this at all. After all, Afghanistan does not have a dynamic economy, or valuable resources that they could take. It serves as a base from which they direct their arrows toward India, and in my view, they will eventually direct them toward China as well. They have already begun – the operation in India was a savage terrorist operation, in which, according to reports, more than 200 people were killed. These people had nothing to do with events [in the region]. They were tourists, but even if they were diplomats, they were only going about their daily routine.

Any group that could carry out [such an attack], and use it as a pretext to generate conflict between Pakistan and India, and to aggravate their sensitivities... In my opinion, it must have been planned and carried out by people from out of the region. It is impossible for such acts to have been carried out by people living in the region – whether in Pakistan, India, or Afghanistan. Without a doubt, it was planned from outside. At any rate, [America] is progressing in this direction, with this plan, which began with 9/11, continued with the attacks against Afghanistan and Iraq, and is now focusing on Afghanistan, India, China, as well as Georgia, and the expansion of the NATO alliance.