Eric Shawn and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad |
NEW YORK – Without the hard work of a WND contributor, a first-ever Fox News interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have never happened.
Michael Evans is a WND columnist, a Middle East analyst and author of the No. 1 New York Times best-seller "The Final Move Beyond Iraq: The Final Solution While the World Sleeps".
Evans, who has worked with Iranian diplomats for years, spent several days at the Hilton Hotel in New York City this past week negotiating with Iranian delegation in an effort to secure a sit-down interview between Ahmadinejad and Fox News Channel senior correspondent Eric Shawn.
The delegation finally agreed and scheduled an interview for the morning of Sept. 24, only to unexpectedly cancel it.
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That's when Evans went to work again.
Evans worked through the night with his Iranian contacts to appeal directly to Ahmadinejad to follow through on the interview.
The Iranian president got the message and rescheduled the interview with Shawn.
Shawn later wrote the "feisty" interview was "a provocative, if not unsettling, experience."
After a series of testy exchanges over such volatile topics as the possible involvement of the U.S. government in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Iran's development of nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad accused Shawn of "almost arguing" with him.
Shawn responded afterward, "It's hard not to 'almost argue' with someone who looks you straight in the eye and suggests that your government is behind the killing of thousands of its own people. It's hard not to 'almost argue' with someone who would represent himself as a purveyor of peace, even as his regime continually defies Security Council resolutions regarding its disputed nuclear program and condones the stoning of its own people. It's hard not to 'almost argue' with someone who has questioned the Holocaust and has called for wiping Israel off the map.
"And at the end of the day," Shawn writes, "[Ahmadinejad] insists that his message to the 'good people of America' is one of peace and good will ... a message, delivered, as all his statements seems to be, with a smile."