Ahmadinejad Says Oliver Stone is "Part of the Great Satan"

Notoriously laid-back Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has just turned down a request by Oliver Stone to be interviewed for a documentary about him. The reason? Stone is "part of the Great Satan". Aides to Ahmadinejad said that they were contacted by Stone through Iranian filmmakers acting as intermediaries. But one of the aides, Mahdi Kalhor, told the Fars news agency: "While it is true that Oliver Stone is considered to be among the opposition in the U.S., the opposition is still part of the Great Satan... We believe that the American cinema system is devoid of all culture and art and is only used as a device". Stone didn't seem to take it too badly. His dry response was: "I have been called a lot of things, but never a great Satan. I wish the Iranian people well and only hope their experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours". This is hardly the most outrageous statement Ahmadinejad has made: he has also denied the Holocaust, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at his other unorthodox views.