Ahmadinejad Backtracks on Vow to Help Free Hikers

The three American hikers being held in Iran probably shouldn’t count on that helping hand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised them. In an interview airing tonight on ABC, Diane Sawyer asked Ahmadinejad if he was still going to do his best to free the hikers, as he promised. “Yes,” he replied. “But I have got a question to you. How do you know they have accidentally crossed into Iran? How do you know they were looking for waterfalls and forests?”

When Sawyer asked if he had evidence to the contrary, he exclaimed, “Who has told you this? Are you a judge? Have the intelligence agents told you this?" When she pushed him further, he said, "I am not the judge to judge about it." He also dismissed the recently revealed document showing that Iran was working on a nuclear weapon’s trigger mechanism as a fabrication from the US government. “I think that some of the claims about our nuclear issue have turned into a repetitive and tasteless joke,” he said. (More Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stories.)