Iran Hasn’t Eased Stance on Israel, Supreme Leader’s Adviser Says
Worst Slurs: Iran?s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei topped a list of anti-Semitic slurs for chiding Israel as the rabid dog of the region. Image by Getty Images
Iran has not softened its position on Israel, a top aide to Iran’s supreme leader said.
“Iran will not recognize Israel. We still emphasize that Israel is a usurper and occupying regime and we will not come along with it,” Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser on international affairs to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told a group of religious leaders from Pakistan visiting Iran on Saturday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
The comments came several days after British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond said in an interview with the British media that the Iranian government had displayed a more nuanced approach on Israel than its predecessor.
Velayati added that Islamic countries still refuse to recognize Israel and that “the Palestinian people’s fight should continue until they regain their territories.”
The Iranian Foreign Ministry also rejected Hammond’s remarks, which were made last week in Tehran following the reopening of the British Embassy there.
“There were no talks on the Zionist regime and the report that Iran has changed its position is denied,” a ministry official said.
Meanwhile, Fars reported Sunday that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court issued 10-year prison terms for two suspects on charges of spying for the United States and Israel. The suspects were not identified.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Seyed Mahmoud Alawi announced in October that Iranian security forces had arrested several spies in the Southern province of Bushehr, where the country’s first nuclear power plant is located.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
