Iranian President: Israel Should be 'Wiped Off the Map'

Agence France Presse:

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday openly called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and lashed out at Muslim nations who recognise the Jewish state.

"The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," the president told a conference in Tehran entitled: 'The World without Zionism'.

"The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land," he thundered in a fiery speech on what he called an "historic war between the oppressor and the world of Islam".

"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

His comments were the first time in years that such a high-ranking Iranian official has called for Israel's eradication, even though such slogans are still regularly used at regime rallies. READ MORE

Addressing some 4,000 students gathered in an interior ministry conference hall, Ahmadinejad also called for Palestinian unity, resistance and "the annihilation of the Zionist regime".

His mere appearance at the conference drew chants of "Death to Israel", but Ahmadinejad quickly told students all of whom wore black and were sporting green headbands to shout the slogan louder.

"The Islamic umma (community) will not allow its historic enemy to live in its heartland," said the president, an austere veteran of Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guards who took office in August after scoring a landslide win in a June presidential election.

"Anyone who signs a treaty which recognises the entity of Israel means he has signed the surrender of the Muslim world," Ahmadinejad said, telling Muslim leaders who recognise Israel that they "face the wrath of their own people."

"We should not settle for a piece of land," he said of Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip.

His tone represents a dramatic change from that of former president Mohammad Khatami, whose favoured topic was "dialogue among civilisations" and who led an effort to improve Iran's relations with the West.

Ahmadinejad instead spoke of an "historic war" between Islam and the West.

"It dates backs hundreds of years. Sometimes Islam has advanced. Sometimes nobody was winning. Unfortunately over the past 300 years, the world of Islam has been in retreat," he lamented.

"One hundred years ago the last trench of Islam fell, when the oppressors went towards the creation the Zionist regime. They are using it as a fort to spread its aims in the heart of the Islamic world."

The term "oppressor" is used by the clerical regime to refer to the United States, and in the plural form generally also includes Britain and Israel.

The one-day conference, organised by an Islamic students' association, also included a message from Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

"We should gather all means to annihilate the regime which occupies Qods (Jerusalem)," Nasrallah said in his message, read out by Hezbollah's representative in Tehran.

Also featured was a six-man choir dressed in dark grey who gave some harmonic renditions of Koranic verses. Prizes were also on offer for the best Zionist caricature and in a letter-writing competition also themed: "The world without Zionism".

The Tehran representative of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was also present, while the ambassadors of Syria and the Palestinian Authority put in a showing.

"We have a multitude of activities," event spokesman Saed Ramazan Ali told AFP. "We want to acquaint Iranian students with the evil aims of the Zionist regime."