Middle East News

Ahmadinejad: Iran determined to eradicate Israel

Aug 25, 2011, 10:12 GMT

Tehran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran was determined to eradicate Israel, ISNA news agency reported Thursday.

'Iran believes that whoever is for humanity should also be for eradicating the Zionist regime [Israel] as symbol of suppression and discrimination,' Ahmadinejad said in an interview with a Lebanese television network, carried by ISNA.

'Iran follows this issue [the eradication of Israel] with determination and decisiveness and will never ever withdraw from this standpoint and policy,' the Iranian president added in the interview with the Al-Manar network.

The remarks by Ahmadinejad came one day before the annual anti-Israeli rallies named Qods (Jerusalem) Day, which are held nationwide in Iran on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Ahmadinejad on Monday said that Iranians and Muslim nations worldwide should hold Qods rallies and show their willingness to dispose of this 'infectious tumour and this regime full of rascality.'

The Iranian president provoked international condemnation in 2005 when he said that Israel should be eliminated from the map of the Middle East and transferred to Europe or North America.

The international isolation of the Islamic republic escalated after Ahmadinejad held a Holocaust conference in 2006 in which he questioned whether the killing of 6 million Jews in Europe during World War II actually happened.

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