TEHRAN, SEPTEMBER 30: Presdient Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the negative reception he received at Columbia University failed to damage Iran’s image and instead hurt America’s prestige abroad, state television reported on Sunday as Iran’s Parliament approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the US Army “terrorist organisations”.

The move by the hard-line dominated parliament was an apparent response to a recent US Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp and was sure to escalate the already high tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Ahmadinejad said during his New York university appearance the world witnessed “the greatness of the Iranian nation” in the face of “insults” by its American host.

“With the grace of God, the Columbia University issue revealed their aggressive and mean-spirited image....It backfired. What happened was exactly opposite of what their shallow minds had presumed,” Ahmadinejad said after returning to Iran from his visit to the United States.

The Iranian President was referring to his controversial appearance on Monday in which he was introduced by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger as exhibiting “all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator” who was “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated” for his denials of the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad said the visit was a “great achievement” because the combative introduction contrasted with the Iranian leader’s polite response.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday joined the country’s Parliament in labelling the US Army and CIA as terrorist organisations in a largely symbolic move.

Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in his weekly brief that he agreed with the symbolic resolution passed by Iran’s hardline parliament on Saturday, which condemned the two US institutions for its actions in Japan in World War Two, as well as more recently in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. “The label of terrorist is suitable for the military and security forces of the United States,” he said.