June 1, 2008
Iran calls on Muslims to 'erase' Israel
http://jihadwatch.org/But their nuclear program is peaceful. No worries there. Note also that Mottaki frames the conflict in strictly religious terms -- Israel is on land he thinks should be ruled by Muslims, and so must be destroyed. He doesn't seem to be one who would be mollified by the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. "Iran calls on Muslims to 'erase' Israel," from AFP, June 1 (thanks to JE):
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called on the world's Muslims today to work to "erase" Israel, in the latest verbal attack by Tehran against the Jewish state.
"As the Imam Khomeini said, if each Muslim throws a bucket of water on Israel, Israel will be erased," Mottaki told a conference in Tehran, recalling a saying by Iran's late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sparked international outrage for his repeated attacks against Israel, which he has predicted is doomed to disappear and described as a "stinking corpse" and a "dead rat".
His most notorious attack was in 2005 when he repeated another saying from Khomeini calling for Israel to be "wiped from the map".
Mottaki added: "More than ever, the Zionist regime is disintegrating from within. Today, the Islamic resistance in this region has shattered the regime's legend of invincibility."...
But Iran, which does not recognise Israel, insists that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and aimed solely at generating energy for a growing population.