Imagine the international outcry, the furious denunciations, the hand-wringing over “Islamophobia,” if a Western leader spoke this way about Iran. But about this, the world yawns. “Ahmadinejad predicts the removal of ‘Zionists’ from the world,” from the Telegraph, September 3:
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has predicted the failure of the Middle East talks and the removal of “the Zionist regime from the world scene”.
The hardline leader told the annual Palestinian solidarity day rally in Tehran that a popular revolt by the people of the Middle East would extinguish the Jewish homeland even if the governments reach a peace agreement.
“If the leaders of the region do not have the guts, then the people of the region are capable of removing the Zionist regime from the world scene,” he said.
In response the pro-government crowd chanted “Death to America. Death to Israel.”
President Ahmadinejad said that direct peace talks which Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas relaunched with Israel in Washington on Thursday after a 20-month hiatus were “doomed” to fail.
“What do they want to negotiate about? Who are they representing? What are they going to talk about?” the Iranian president said of the Palestinian leadership.
“Who gave them the right to sell piece of Palestinian land? The people of Palestine and the people of the region will not allow them to sell even an inch of Palestinian soil to the enemy.
“The negotiations are stillborn and doomed.”
Iran is implacably opposed to the new peace talks and has given strong support to the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza and which carried out two shooting attacks against Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank in the run-up to their relaunch that killed four and wounded two….