Shrugging of the volley of criticism against him for listing conspiracy theories behind 9/11 attacks at the United Nations, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad underlined that his remarks were meant to help Americans.
"We are trying to defend the rights of the American people so that their money is not used for killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan, so that their children do not end up in locations where they do not understand and must not go to in the first place to die," Ahmadinejad said.
"Do you think these are bad statements to make," he added, at a packed press conference in a New York hotel on Friday.
"This is assistance. This is what I call assistance," he added.
Earlier this week, speaking at the UN General Assembly, Ahmadinejad indicated that American and Israeli forces could have carried out 9/11 and called for a UN investigation into what really happened.
He had caused widespread outrage in his speech on Thursday to the General Assembly by claiming that some "segments" of the US government "orchestrated" 9/11 to "reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime".
"That some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime," the president told world leaders.
"It is proposed that the United Nations set up an independent fact-finding group for the event of September 11 so that in the future expressing views about it is not forbidden," he said.
On Friday, Ahmadinejad reiterated his calls for an investigation. "Two countries were invaded and up till now, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed as a result," the Iranian leader said.
"Don't you think that that excuse needs to be revised? Don't you feel that if a fact-finding mission was present from the start to explore the true reason behind September 11, that we would not see the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq today?" he added.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has slammed these remarks as "hateful" and "offensive" in an interview with BBC's Persian news service on Friday.
"And particularly for him to make the statement here in Manhattan, just a little north of Ground Zero, where families lost their loved ones," he said. "For him to make a statement like that was inexcusable."
Ahmadinejad, however, asserts that all governments and people do not have to take the view of the US government, and asserted that the majority of Americans are suspicious about who carried out 9/11.
"If the US government is upset I can see why..because the US government expects everyone to follow it and to follow its decisions," he said.
