Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had de Gaulle to tell a French magazine (mercè what I did there?) that all the times calling Israel a cancerous tumor that needs to be removed, writing on missiles “Death to Israel” – it’s all just a big misunderstanding. They don’t mean they will do it – they are just expressing the wish that Israel will destroy itself.
And he would would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling yids Iranian conservatives!
“Can you believe I actually said that?”
When Iranian officials say Israel will be wiped off the map, does it mean they are suggesting that Iran should be the one to do it?
The debate was renewed last week by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. When an interviewer from a French news magazine suggested that Paris might be reluctant to sell weaponry to Iran because the Islamic republic had called for Israel’s destruction and had missiles that carried the inscription “Death to Israel”, Zarif objected.
No officials from the Islamic republic had ever called for the destruction of Israel, he said; rather, he claimed, the official line has always been that Israel’s downfall would be of its own doing.
The remarks were not well-received by the hard-line conservative camp, which answered with headlines accusing Zarif of distorting the words and clear policy of the Islamic republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
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The ultra hard-line Iranian daily Kayhan accused Zarif of carelessness and distortion in a piece titled: Don’t Distort. The Destruction of Israel Is The Islamic Republic’s Official Policy. “The Imam clearly said that Israel must be wiped out,” Kayhan said, citing Ayatollah Khomeini.
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Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi, a member of Iran’s Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, accused Zarif of lying. “These gentlemen have said that the Imam didn’t say that Israel must be wiped out, [that the] Imam has said that Israel will be wiped out on its own, automatically. Well, this is a lie,” Azghadi said at a December 24 meeting in the Iranian capital.
The hard-line Fars news agency, affiliated with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, appeared to challenge Zarif by posting on Twitter old video segments of Khomeini making anti-Israeli comments, including one where he called Israel a “cancerous tumor” and said that Muslims should revolt against it.
It looks likes Zarif’s comments have been destroyed from the inside – ironic, considering his claims about Israel’s destruction.
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
