Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized the United States in his speech at the UN General Assembly, calling it a terrorist state. He showed pictures of Iranian students who died in past US airstrikes and argued that the US had committed barbaric aggression against Iran. President Ahmadinejad emphasized that Iran is only acting in self-defense and is not a terrorist, and he pointed to the US and Israel as the forces behind the attacks on Iran. This speech was an extremely unusual event in which a leader of a warring party harshly criticized its enemy from the heart of its territory.
