When President Bush and his advisers decided to allow President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran into the country to address the UN, their strategy was simple: containment.

There would be no visits to other cities where he could denounce Washington or question Israel’s legitimacy. There would be no opportunities to turn questions about his nuclear intentions into diatribes on America’s nuclear arsenal.

It turned out that Ahmadinejad had a Plan B.

On Wednesday evening, Ahmadinejad squared off with the nation’s foreign policy establishment, parrying questions for an hour and three-quarters with two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations, then ending the evening by asking whether they were simply shills for the Bush administration.

Never raising his voice and thanking each questioner with a tone that oozed polite hostility, he spent 40 minutes questioning the evidence that the Holocaust ever happened— “I think we should allow more impartial studies to be done on this,” he said after hearing an account of an 81-year-old member, the insurance mogul Maurice R Greenberg, who saw the Dachau concentration camp as Germany fell— and he refused to even consider Washington’s proposal for Russia to provide Iran with nuclear reactor fuel, and take it back once it is used.

He traced the history of 50 years of unfilled deals with the US, Germany, France and others— skipping over the Iranian revolution and the hostage-taking that followed—and concluded, “How can we rely on these partners.” His solution? The US should shut down its own fuel production and “within five years, we will sell you our own fuel, with a 50 percent discount!” He settled back into his seat with a broad smile that some in the group described as a smirk.

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