Ahmadinejad regaled the Assembly with his typical dismissal of the U.N. and the Security Council's abilities to fight the onslaught of global terrorism and threatened security. Given the same day as President Bush's final address to the General Assembly, Ahmadinejad's eight-page speech noted that Americans and Europeans were "being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists." He also claimed that "the American empire" was on the brink of collapse because of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan to win "votes in elections." Keeping to his previously held stance, the Iranian President vowed that his country's nuclear program remained peaceful.