Al Arabiya, 11 Sept 2011 – The Iranian president says the United States used the Sept. 11 attacks as an excuse for launching wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the attacks were a “complicated, designed game” to affect people’s emotions and pave way for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

“September 11 was actually a game designed to influence the emotions of the human community, in order to find a pretext for attacking Islamic regions and invading Iraq and Afghanistan,” he was quoted as saying on the website of his office on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
It was not the first time Ahmadinejad has criticized Iran’s arch-foe over the attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people, destroyed the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center and plunged the country into an era of wars.

In June, during a counter-terrorism summit in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said that “the American government used the attacks as a pretext to occupy two countries, and kill, injure and displace people in the region.”

He also sparked Western fury in September 2010 when in his speech at the United Nations ̶ four miles (six kilometers) from where the World Trade Center used to be ̶ he said that “some people within the US government orchestrated the attacks to reverse the declining American economy.”

And in March 2010 he called the 9/11 attacks as a “big lie.”

He also says US launched those wars to solve its own economic problems. Ahmadinejad’s remarks appeared on Iranian state TV’s website on Sunday.

In 2010, New York turned down his request to visit the World Trade Center site to pay respects to the victims of the terrorist attacks.