Tehran: Iran's highest authority lashed out against Israel on Friday with some of his harshest comments in recent memory about the Jewish state.
Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the black-turbaned ayatollah who is Iran's top political and military figure, said his country's hostility to Israel extended beyond the government to the Israeli people as well. In doing so, he brushed aside recent overtures by top Iranian officials to ordinary people in the Jewish state.
Khamenei said Iran and Israel were on a "collision course," a statement that could increase tensions in a Middle East already fearful of a conflict between the countries.
"Who are Israelis?" Khamenei told thousands of worshippers gathered for Friday prayers in downtown Tehran. "They are responsible for usurping houses, territory, farmlands and businesses. They are combatants at the disposal of Zionist operatives. A Muslim nation cannot remain indifferent vis-a-vis such people who are stooges at the service of the arch-foes of the Muslim world."
Iran and Israel are locked in a war of words. Israel accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons under the guise of a peaceful energy program and supporting anti-Israeli hardline groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Iran's leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel.
The comments came amid a controversy in Iran surrounding remarks attributed to an Iranian official close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a vice president in charge of tourism, was quoted in a July interview as saying that Iranians were friends with the Israeli people, despite the conflict between the governments.
All friends
"Today, Iran is friends with the American and Israeli people," he said, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency. "No nation in the world is our enemy."
Hardliners close to the government pounced on Mashaei's remarks. But on Thursday night Ahmadinejad appeared to back up his deputy and voiced sympathy for Israeli people, even as he predicted Israel's demise. "The Iranian nation never recognised Israel and will never ever recognise it," he said in a news conference.
"But we feel pity for those who have been deceived or smuggled into Israel to be oppressed citizens in Israel."
Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive in New York within days for the opening session of the UN General Assembly, which will probably take up the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Khamenei left little doubt about Iran's position on relations with Israel, saying he was raising the issue "to spell an end to any debates" about the matter. "It is incorrect, irrational, pointless and nonsense to say that we are friend of Israeli people," said Khamenei, who delivers prayer sermons only on special occasions.
Iranian officials typically increase anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian rhetoric in the week before the last Friday in Ramadan, which is called Jerusalem Day in Iran. This year, it falls on September 26.
'Friends with Israel': Statement retracted
One of Iran's vice presidents is retracting controversial remarks he made that Iranians were "friends" with the Israeli people. Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei made the retraction in a statement published on Saturday in several Iranian newspapers. Mashaei says he follows Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said on Friday that it was "illogical" for Iranians to be friends with Israelis.
- AP
