Ahmadinejad and Khamenei: Iran’s latest calls for Israel’s annihilation, August 2012
Published: 22 August 2012 Briefing Number 318	Click to Print

Summary: In August 2012, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad and Supreme religious leader Khamenei each made explicit calls for the annihilation of Israel.  This Briefing sets out verbatim what they said.  Our key messages: - Such statements amount to declarations of war against Israel. Similar statements have been uttered by Iran’s leaders for seven years, since 2005 - The ideology driving these statements grips not just Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, but the Iranian political, military and religious elite as a whole (see Beyond Images Briefing 217) - Much of the international community reacted to these latest statements with strong verbal condemnations of Iran.  But words alone are not going to protect Israel.  Israel has to face the physical consequences of the Iranian threat - It is the blend of Iran’s delusional, annihilationist ideology and Iran’s emerging nuclear weapons capability (see Beyond Images Briefing 317) which makes the Iranian challenge so dangerous, for Israel and internationally - Israel as a sovereign country has the right and the responsibility to defend its citizens against the threat which Iran and its leaders now pose. Any country would find such threats intolerable

Ahmadinejad:  The Zionist regime as a “cancerous tumour”.....
 
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the following in a speech which he delivered at a rally in Teheran on 17 August 2012 to mark Al-Quds day (Jerusalem day):

“The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumour.... The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land.... a new Middle East will definitely be formed.  With the grace of God and help of the nations, in the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Americans nd Zionists.....”

Source: reported by AFP, and by other news agencies, 20 August 2012

Ahmadinejad: The Zionist regime is “an insult to all humanity.....”

On the same day, Ahmadinejad also addressed worshippers at Tehran University. According to the Washington Post, Ahmadinejad said the following:

“The existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to all humanity..... Israel is a corrupt, anti-human organised minority group which stands up to [by which he means “against” – Beyond Images] all divine values.....”

Source: Washington Post (based on Associated Press reports), 17 August 2012

Supreme leader Khamenei:  the “fake Zionist regime will disappear”....
 
Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addressed a meeting of hundreds of veterans of the Iran-Iraq war on 15 August. According to the Jerusalem post diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon, and based on a report which Keinon saw on Iran’s Mehr news agency, Khamenei said the following:  

“The fake Zionist regime will disappear from the landscape of geography....”

Source: Jerusalem Post, 16 August 2012
Supreme leader Khamenei:  Israel is “the root of evil” in the region
 
During the same speech, Khamenei was reported by Iran’s Fars News Agency (in a report published the next day) to have made the following points:

- The occupation of Palestinian territories and the formation of the Israeli regime are the root of evil in the Middle East

- if this “conspiracy” had not taken place, wars, divisions and interventions by colonialists and oppressors would not have occurred

- The liberation of the Palestinian territories from the hands of the usurper Zionist regime is the responsibility of all Muslims

Source: Fars News Agency, press release, 16 August 2012

Some related Beyond Images Briefings

Briefing 158 – 30 October 2005
“Wiping Israel off the map....”: what’s new?
 
Briefing 217 – 25 July 2008
Iranian leaders’ incitement to genocide against the Jewish people

Briefing 237 – 17 March 2009
The speech of Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei, March 2009: His call for Israel’s destruction
 
Briefing 239 – 19 April 2009
Ahmadinejad’s anti-semitism at the UN.....
and the “deafening silence” among Western elites

Briefing 317 – 22 August 2012
Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons: the IAEA’s grim conclusions, in 2012