The following are excerpts from an interview with the director of the Iranian Fars News Agency, Mahdi Fazaeli, which aired on the Iranian News Network (IRINN) on September 6, 2005.

Fazaeli: Other media also state explicitly that the way the American politicians treat the area afflicted (by Hurricane Katrina) stems, in part, from the fact that blacks live in that area.

Yesterday, Al-Jazeera issued an important news item: one of the reasons for this treatment is that blacks did not vote for Bush. Only few of the residents of this area voted for him. This is very significant. It shows that American politicians, and especially the American president, mix up personal hostilities in a national disaster and in a purely humanitarian matter. Naturally, Ms. Rice came to that area and said she was of African descent and tried to cover up this matter and explain it somehow, but I think the disgrace here is so obvious that it cannot be easily concealed.