Ahmadinejad at the CFR.

Over the objections of the administration and Jewish groups that boycotted the event, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has become the defiant face of Iran, squared off with the nation's foreign-policy establishment, taking questions for nearly two hours from two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"The decision by the council's president, Richard N. Haass, to invite Mr. Ahmadinejad to the session touched off a rare outcry of protest in an organization whose meetings are usually as staid as the portraits of long-forgotten diplomats on its walls," observed the New York Times. Haass, who ran the event, had to deal with objections from both the Bush administration and "leaders of several Jewish groups, whom Mr. Haass invited--and who promptly asked if the council would have invited Hitler in the 1930s."

"Some of us considered quitting to make it clear how offensive this is," said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman, notes the Times, "was one of the Jewish leaders whose attendance Mr. Haass sought." However, after consulting with several prominent Jewish leaders, including Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, Foxman and other Jewish activists "decided against a mass resignation--particularly after the council made the session a 'meeting' rather than a dinner.... 'It is more offensive to break bread with the guy,' Mr. Foxman said. 'I thought dinner was crossing the line.'"

Remarkably, the council's leadership chose to defend the decision to invite Ahmadinejad by reciting a roster of past invited guests who were terrorists, tyrants, and thugs.

"We've had Castro," said Lisa Shields, the council's communications director. "We've had Arafat, and [genocidal communist ruler of Zimbabwe Robert] Mugabe. We've had Gerry Adams," political front-man for the murderous Irish Republican Army. (See also the article on page 12.)