Updated at 6:37 p.m. ET: An anti-Islam film that sparked violent protests in many countries had "nothing to do with" a deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi earlier this month, Libya's president told NBC News.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News' Ann Curry, President Mohamed Magarief discounted claims that the attack was in response to a movie produced in California and available on YouTube. He noted that the assault happened on Sept. 11 and that the video had been available for months before that.

"Reaction should have been, if it was genuine, should have been six months earlier. So it was postponed until the 11th of September," he said. "They chose this date, 11th of September to carry a certain message."

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Magarief said there were no protesters at the site before the attack, which he noted came in two assaults, first with rocket-propelled grenades on the consulate, then with mortars at a safe house.

Slideshow: Anger over film spreads throughout Muslim world

Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.

Launch slideshow

The attack took the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens, as well as information management officer Sean Smith and security personnel Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

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Magarief told Curry that based on the accuracy of the assault, he believes the attackers must have had training and experience using the weapons.

"It's a pre-planned act of terrorism," he said, adding that the anti-Islam film had "nothing to do with this attack."

Though Magarief believes the attack was the work of Islamist fundamentalists, he dismisses any notion that Libya is in danger of becoming a theocracy.

“This will never happen,“ he said. “ They don’t have the strength. They don’t have the supporters. They will remain a minority that’s isolated, that will not be accepted by us. And I’m sure Libyans will fight to the last man against seeing this happen in our land.”

'A strong friend'
Magarief said that while Libyans appeared to be behind the attack that "these Libyans do not represent the Libyan people or Libyan population in any sense of the word."

He added: "We consider the United States as a friend, not only a friend, a strong friend, who stood with us in our moment of need."

More than 40 people have been questioned in connection with the incident, the Libyan leader told Curry.

He described Stevens as a "humble and very unique human being" and a "great friend of Libya."

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The Obama administration initially maintained that the attacks were directly linked to protests over the film. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sept. 16, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said: “What happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, prompted by the video.”

However, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney last week said it was "self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack."

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Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, President Barack Obama said: “There are no words that excuse the killing of innocent” people.

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BEIRUT -- The headline of Lebanon’s leading English Newspaper read “Calm reigns as protests condemn film.”

Ayman Mohyeldin

For the tens of millions of Muslims who have been watching angry protests sweep the region over the past 10 days, reading a headline like that would be welcomed as a collective sigh of relief. Some 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide are being depicted and characterized by tens of thousands of angry protesters.

Since the emergence of an insulting anti-Islam film surfaced last week, a wave of frenzy has swept the Muslim world at large and the Arab world in specific. The overwhelming majority of Muslims rejected and denounced the film that insulted the Prophet Muhammad. Here is another fact: the overwhelming majority of Muslims did not participate in protests, take to the streets or attack embassies or restaurants.

Lebanon has seen its share of ant-film protests. In fact, Hezbollah, the powerful political militia organized one of the largest demonstrations to date earlier in the week. On Friday, they held a protest, this time in Baalbek outside of the capital. In Beirut, tight security barricaded the downtown area as a hardline Salafist leader rallied about 2,000 of his supporters against the U.S. and France defending Muhammad.

But how many people actually saw the film or the subsequent derogatory caricatures printed in a French magazine? Where were the voices of the silent majority of Muslims, the ones who woke up daily and went about their business not paying attention to the media frenzy and street demos popping up at US embassies?

On Friday, I spent the afternoon conducting an unofficial, unscientific survey of a small sample of Lebanese. Out of the two dozen people I met in the different neighborhoods of Beirut, not a single person had seen the full 14-minute clip. A handful had seen excerpts of it but did not finish it, and the overwhelming majority had not seen any part of the movie.

Hassan Ammar / AP

Lebanese Hezbollah veiled women chant slogans Saturday during a protest in the southern border town of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon about a film ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Arabic writing reads

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Surprisingly, there was an overwhelming consensus among the people I spoke with. From those coming out of Friday prayers in Beirut’s central mosque to those taking a stroll in Hamra, few felt the violent protests were justifiable. In fact, most felt the protests did not reflect Islamic values or Muslims. All felt that while it was justifiable to be upset over the film, the violence was not acceptable.

Among examples:

• Tarek Taha, 17, a high school student: “I think that the film and the cartoon … target every Muslim in a really personal way. I’ve seen the beginning of the film and I couldn’t continue it because I was really offended … We must protest in another quiet and peaceful way together to get our demands.”
• Abdallah, 26, social media consultant: “I’ve been disappointed with the killing of the ambassador in Libya and I’ve been disappointed with the way Muslims and Arabs demonstrated and the way they react to anything that hurt their religion. It’s not right. You can use media, you can use more modern methods, to show your own opinion without using violence and killing your own people and destroying your country.”
• Zeinab Hakim, 21, Lebanese University journalism student: “I saw the trailer. I just saw the half of it and I cut it off. It was really really awful. This is not us. This represents the violence, scars the image of Islam around the world. Our prophet Muhammad is as much a saint to Muslims as Jesus was for the Christians, so why would they do such a thing? … We want to protest, but to protest in a peaceful way. The protests that end in killing and end in burning, I’m against them 100 percent.”
• Farah Assi, 27, journalism and advertising student who heard about the cartoons:  It’s not the first time they’ve insulted Muslims. It’s just one of the ways to tease Muslims … Some of the protests, the peaceful ones, can be justified. But the ones that lead to killing people and others, I’m 100 percent against them.”

Slideshow: Anger over film spreads throughout Muslim world

Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.

Launch slideshow

The initial wave of protests was deadly, destructive and disruptive. But 10 days later, the protests were relatively calm and peaceful and secured. What happened that changed? Well for one, Arab leaders, both political and religious, changed their tone dramatically. At first, most leaders in the region remained on the sidelines not commenting on the violence of the protests but rather condemning the films.

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In fact, initial reaction from Egyptian officials included the cabinet demanding an apology from the U.S. government and punishment against the filmmaker. Ironically, there was no pledge by the Egyptian government to punish protesters who vandalized and scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

A week later, Egypt’s President Mohammad Morsi had a different tone. After Friday prayers in Cairo he reportedly told worshippers, “Violence is not justifiable even when it’s to prohibit someone else from committing sin.”

On the eve of this week’s Friday protests across the region, religious figures, most notably Egypt’s top figures, denounced the use of violence and urged Muslims “to endure the insults” that had been leveled against them. Both were seen as calls urging calm and shifting the onus of the protests attention away from the West to a more introspective need to address the violence the protesters were resorting to so they could express themselves.

As one worshipper told me in Beirut, at “the end of the day what have these protests brought us, this was a film made in the U.S., but here on the ground it has led Muslims to kill Muslims.”

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The siege of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya last week that left four dead, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, was a "terrorist attack," a White House spokesman said Thursday.

"It is I think self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, our (consulate) was attacked violently and the result was four deaths of American officials. That is self-evident," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One.

Since the Benghazi attack occurred amid protests of an American-made anti-Islam video that was circulating on the Internet, it has been unclear whether it was planned independently or launched opportunistically when the demonstration was under way, or if it was a spontaneous attack emerging out of the protests.  

This was the first time the White House called it a "terrorist attack."

Esam Omran Al-fetori / Reuters file

An armed man reacts as the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi burns on Sept. 11 after protests purportedly sparked by an anti-Islam film by a U.S. filmmaker.

"We are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to al-Qaida or al-Qaida affiliates," said Carney, who noted that the FBI is investigating.

Related: First Read: Press Secretary says it is self-evident that Libya attack was terrorism

"According to the best info we have right now it was an opportunistic attack on our mission in Benghazi."

The low-budget video, "Innocence of Muslims," with its insulting portrayal of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, had been circulating on the Internet for months, and it is unclear why it became a focal point of anger in the Muslim world just before the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks on the United States.

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Carolyn Kaster / AP file

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney speaks during his daily news briefing at the White House on Wednesday.

"What we do know is that the natural protests that emerged over the video were used as an excuse by extremists," said President Barack Obama, speaking at a forum hosted by the Spanish-language TV station Univision on Thursday about the attacks on diplomatic posts in Libya and Egypt.

Protests, some of them violent, have erupted at U.S. diplomatic missions across majority Muslim countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in the past week.

In Benghazi, the attack on the consulate took the lives of Stevens, as well as information management officer Sean Smith and security personnel Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, all of whom were honored in a ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base last week as their remains were returned to the United States.

Amid questioning from U.S. legislators about the security at the U.S. outpost in Libya, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday announced that she is forming an accountability review board to look at the attack on the Benghazi consulate. The board will be led by retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, she told reporters at a press conference.

Clinton said she was scheduled to brief senators and congressmen on Benghazi later Thursday. She said she expected the briefing would cover the security posture at the post before, during and after the attack, and the steps the government has taken since to protect U.S. personnel worldwide.

"I will also talk about the importance of the broader relationship with these countries in light of the events of the past days," Clinton said. "There are obviously very real challenges in these new democracies, these fragile societies."

Clinton said she will be joined on the Hill by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Sandy Winnefeld, and experts from FBI, the State Department, and elsewhere in the government.

Clinton was asked about a report that alleges Stevens told others that he was on an al-Qaida hit list. She said she has no information or reason to believe there is any basis for that.

NBC News' Catherine Chomiak, Ali Weinberg contributed to this report. 

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