Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Iran, Israel on 'collision course'
Iran's supreme leader brushes aside recent peaceful overtures by top Iranian officials to Israeli citizens with statements that could inflame tensions about a potential conflict.
TEHRAN -- Iran's highest authority lashed out against Israel today with some of his harshest comments about the Jewish state in recent memory.
Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the black-turbaned ayatollah who is Iran's top political and military figure, said that Iran's hostility to Israel extended to the Israeli people, as well as the government, brushing aside recent peaceful 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 breaking out between the countries.
"Who are Israelis?" Khamenei told thousands of worshipers gathered for Friday prayers in downtown Tehran. "They are responsible for usurping houses, territory, farmlands and business. They are combatants at the disposal of Zionist operatives. A Muslim nation cannot remain indifferent vis-à-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 militant groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories. Iran's leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of the Jewish state, which they consider a Western colonial outpost.
The comments came amid a storm of 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, reportedly said in a July interview that Iranians were friends with the Israeli people, despite the conflict between the governments.
"Today, Iran is friends with the American and Israeli people," he said in July, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency. "No nation in the world is our enemy."
Hard-liners 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 recognized Israel and will never ever recognize 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."
