Ahmadinejad Speech Triggers Western Walkout at U.N.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivers a rambling, anti-Western tirade at the United Nations, and the American and European diplomats in attendance head for the doors.

What has become an increasingly common scene played out again Thursday at the U.N. General Assembly.

It was the Iranian leader’s seventh visit to New York, and while the usual widespread protest and controversy that has surrounded his past visits was noticeably more demure this time around, that didn’t really change the scene inside the U.N., the New York Times reports.

Ahmadinejad repeated many of his traditional attacks against the U.S. and the West, saying that global poverty was a direct result of “greed for materialism in the United States and Europe,” suggesting that 9/11 may have been a American-led conspiracy, and calling the U.S. decision not to disclose the location of Osama Bin Laden's burial "mysterious."

He added, "They threaten anyone who questions the Holocaust and Sept. 11 with sanctions and military action?"

The U.S. condemned the address almost immediately. "Mr. Ahmadinejad had a chance to address his own people’s aspirations for freedom and dignity, but instead he again turned to abhorrent anti-Semitic slurs and despicable conspiracy theories," Mark Kornblau, the spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, told the Times.