Ahmadinejad at the United Nations. Photo: Screenshot.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened his remarks by saying he has been speaking on the world’s problems for seven years and that he wants to “raise such issues from a different perspective.”

His perspective on Sept. 26, however, offered much of the same hostility to Israel and the West.

Ahmadinejad said Iran is faced by a continuous “threat by the uncivilized Zionists to resort to military action against our great nation,” and called for a new world order in which Western countries working for “the devil” are not in control.

Erin Pelton, spokeswoman of the U.S. mission to the UN, said “Over the past couple of days, we’ve seen Mr. Ahmadinejad once again use his trip to the UN not to address the legitimate aspirations of the Iranian people but to instead spout paranoid theories and repulsive slurs against Israel.” On Sept. 24, Ahmadinejad had told reporters that while his country “has been around for the last seven, ten thousand years,” Israel has been “occupying” territory in the Middle East for 60-70 years and has “no roots there in history.”

Representatives from the U.S. and Israel decided not to be present for Ahmadinejad’s Yom Kippur remarks.

Ahmadinejad said the world’s “current abysmal situation” has been caused primarily by “the self-proclaimed centers of power who have entrusted themselves to the devil,” and that Israel is driving that “reality.” He recommended the establishment of an “independent fact-finding team” to uncover the “truth” about the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaida terrorists attacks, and used his usual lingo by describing what he called the “hegemonic policies and actions of world Zionism.”