Israel Matzav

As nuke talks begin, Khameni attacks Israel and France

With the latest round of nuclear talks beginning in Geneva on Wednesday, the real power behind the Iranian regime, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, attacked Israel and France.

Khamenei took swipes at Israel and France during his speech to tens of thousands of volunteer Basij militiamen in Tehran, broadcast live on Iran's Press TV.

“Zionist officials cannot be called humans, they are like animals, some of them,” said Khamenei.
“The Israeli regime is doomed to failure and annihilation,” he said.

The “Zionist regime” says things that “only bring humiliation on themselves,” he said adding that it is a regime that “emerged through force and no phenomenon that has emerged through force has continued to exist, and this regime will not continue to exist either.”

The allegation that Iran poses a threat to the world are the “words of enemies,” he said referring to some countries, such as the “rabid dog of the region, namely the Zionist regime,” as quoted by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.

The leader also criticized France. French President Francois Hollande assured Israel on Sunday that France would continue to oppose an easing of economic sanctions against Iran until it was convinced Tehran had given up any pursuit of nuclear weapons.

French officials, Khamenei said, were "not only succumbing to the United States, but they are kneeling before the Israeli regime".

And Obama thinks that this regime can be trusted to use nuclear energy for 'peaceful purposes' and not to develop nuclear weapons? Well, at least one Israeli expert thinks this is all a show:

Brandon Friedman, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University and a researcher at its Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, told The Jerusalem Post that Khamenei gave a hardline speech because “he wants to set the stage for a deal.

If Iran is going to compromise with the US and the West, then its leadership “needs to reinforce the remaining pillar of ideology: the little Satan, or Israel.”

“As Iran approaches some kind of détente with the West, we can expect its rhetoric on Israel to become harsher,” said Friedman.

Commenting on how much of the Western press did not report some of Khamenei’s harsher remarks, Friedman said it was disappointing that the press seems reluctant to report both images coming out of Iran.

“They prefer the image of a new regime,” he said, “but the fact is to understand the Islamic republic, the supreme authority resides with Khamenei.”

“It seems curious that Khamenei’s denigrating and insulting remarks about Israeli officials went under-reported in the Western media,” he said.

Curious? No, sadly it's typical. The world likes to pretend that Iran is something different from its reality. I fear that the world will awaken to that reality far too late to do anything about it. 

Labels: Ayatollah Ali Khameni, Barack Hussein Obama, France, Francois Hollande, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Israel, P 5+1

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:34 PM