Top Iran officials back President on Middle East threats

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Oct. 29 – A string of top Iranian government and security officials backed during Friday’s Qods Days rally hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats against Israel. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Oct. 29 – A string of top Iranian government and security officials backed during Friday’s Qods Days rally hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats against Israel.

Ahmadinejad had told a crowd of several thousand hard-line students on Wednesday that “Israel should be wiped off the map”.

The Commandant of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Rahim Safavi, who attended the rally on Qods Day, or Jerusalem Day, said that Ahmadinejad’s position were the position of the Iranian nation.

The IRGC’s primary task is to export the Islamic revolution to Jerusalem via Baghdad.

“With their psychological war against our nation, the United States and Israel want to compensate for their defeat in Gaza [Strip”> and Iraq”, Safavi said, referring to widespread international condemnation of the Iranian President’s comments.

Ahmadinejad was himself a senior IRGC commander.

Mirroring the president’s comments, Iran’s Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi told reporters at the rally, “Israel was created so that the world’s superpowers could establish their arrogant base, through this terrorist government, in the world of Islam. Therefore, the issue is not just about Palestine, it is far deeper than that”.

Secretary general of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani told reporters at the rally that Ahmadinejad’s position on Israel was no different to that of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Larijani, a close confidant of Khamenei, had also been a senior IRGC commander.

Iran’s Majlis (Parliament) Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel condemned Israeli calls for Tehran’s expulsion from the United Nations. “The Zionist regime can’t do a damn thing!” he said.

Haddad-Adel, a relative and close ally of the Supreme Leader said that Iran’s stance on Israel had not changed and that it would “increase its support for the Palestinian nation” from now on.