Anne Bayefsky writes, “On April 10th the UN Disarmament Commission elected Iran as one of its three Vice-Chairpersons. Afterwards, the UN’s Under Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, Nobuaki Tanaka, said the Commission “played a unique role” with “the advantage of being a fully universal deliberative body.– And from IsraelNationalNews, “Iran Threatens to Destroy Israel, Elected to UN Commission,” with thanks to RB.
Iran’s leaders have reiterated their call for Israel’s annihilation, announcing the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program, and winning a seat on the United Nations’ Disarmament Commission.
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated Iran’s goal of “wiping Israel off the map.” Speaking at a conference of visiting heads of Arab terrorist groups operating in areas under Palestinian Authority control, Ahmadinejad said, “Whether you like it or not, the Zionist regime is on the road to being eliminated.”
Once again expressing his doubt as to whether the Holocaust happened, Ahmadinejad said that, although the Holocaust’s occurrence is “open to doubt, there is no doubt about the holocaust being carried out [by Israel] against the Palestinians.” He went on to call upon Israelis to return to the countries from which their ancestors emigrated. “I tell the governments who support Zionism to allow the migrants [to] return to their countries of origin. If you think you owe them something [because of the Holocaust], give them some of your land,” he said. “The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.”
Ahmadinejad announced last Tuesday that Iran had successfully enriched uranium in order to produce nuclear fuel, in violation of a call by the UN Security Council for Iran to end the project.
The day before, the UN’s Disarmament Commission elected Iran’s Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi as one of its three vice-chairs. “The continued existence of thousands of nuclear warheads in the stockpiles of the nuclear-weapon States, which could destroy the entire globe many times over, and the increasing resort to the threat of their possible use, are the major sources of concern with regard to global peace and security,” Danesh-Yazdi said, adding that Israel was required to place all of its “clandestine nuclear facilities” under UN nuclear watchdog supervision.
Jordan’s representative added that Israel’s refusal to renounce nuclear weapons is a major source of tensions in the Middle East…