The translator for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his whirlwind tour of infidel country was Hooman Majd, and in an adulatory profile piece Majd describes Ahmadinejad’s wish to meet his American hero—Michael Moore: Mahmoud and Me. (Hat tip: Allahpundit.)

The following morning, Mr. Ahmadinejad held a 7:30 a.m. breakfast meeting, again at his hotel, with American academics and journalists. Earlier, he had expressed some interest in having Michael Moore attend, and although attempts were made to reach him (even by myself, since I was asked), they were unsuccessful. I was seated between Gary Sick (of Columbia University) and Jon Lee Anderson (of The New Yorker), and three hot issues were covered: nuclear power, Israel and the Holocaust.

Mr. Ahmadinejad didn’t seem to tire of repeating the responses he had given over and over. The participants were polite and respectful, and if they held any misgivings about breaking bread with someone seemingly reviled by a large number of their fellow New Yorkers as not only perfidious but extremely dangerous, they didn’t show it. Anderson Cooper of CNN posed the softest if not most pro-Iran question of the morning when he asked about the country’s rather under-publicized but valiant efforts at fighting the Afghan opium trade. I realized later that the question must have been intended to help land the unscheduled short interview that Mr. Cooper conducted for CNN that night.

Mainstream media jockeying and sucking up for a chance to interview a genocidal Holocaust-denying Islamic supremacist. Sounds about right.

Note especially this section of Majd’s article, on the so-called international pressure on Iran to come clean about their nuclear weapons program:

“Let me explain a few points,” Mr. Ahmadinejad continued. “One gentleman said the situation between America and Iran has gotten worse. No. It’s not worse than last year; it’s better. Better.

“Last year,” he said, “we were under serious threats—military threats. Today, at the very worst, it’s economic threats, and even that—well, I don’t really want to say, but for those who would like to pursue them, the situation is not conducive …. Even though there are those in America who would like to put pressure on Iran, they won’t be able to. We’ve really progressed. You see, 118 countries [of the Non-Aligned Movement] have specifically supported Iran’s nuclear program. That’s eliminated the excuse that four or five countries speak for the ‘international community.’

“In Indonesia, when I went there, there were great demonstrations in our favor,” he said. “And wherever we went in Asia, we heard shouts of ‘Ahmadinejad, we support you against America!’” He repeated the slogan in English—a language that, judging by his pronunciation, he obviously speaks well enough, but rarely uses.

“Our political situation, by God’s grace, is great,” he went on. “For those who don’t want our people to progress, the situation is not good. In the Middle East, the situation for America has become very bad. Very. They thought if they attack Lebanon, their situation would get better,” he said, allowing no difference between Israel and the United States. “They gave 33 days to the Zionists to do something in Lebanon, and it didn’t happen. Same thing in Iraq; same thing in Afghanistan. It’s not that our situation has gotten worse in the last year; it’s that it’s gotten much better.”

Hooman Majd, by the way, is also a writer at The Huffington Post.