Friday prayer leader rails against Israel's “ineffective threats”
Published: Friday, August 15, 2008
17:00GMT— 1:00PM/EST
ISRAEL – MASHAEI – KHATAMI – SERMONS
Washington, 15 August (IranVNC)—Tehran’s provisional Friday prayer leader warned today that Iran had grown accustomed to Israel's “old and ineffective” threats and that Israelis would have to contend with the psychological consequences of any conflict with Iran.
Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami, a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, said that if Israel could not defeat a “para-military organization” in the hostilities with Lebanon’s Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, then it had no chance against Iran's military, which he claimed is in the best possible shape.
In his second sermon, the Friday imam recalled the Israeli government's advice to its citizens during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war - that they should seek counseling to deal with the traumas of Hezbollah’s rocket attacks.
“Israelis told their people: ‘If you develop psychological problems because of Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, go and see such-and-such a doctor.’ People would go and find out that these doctors were much more psychotic than they themselves were.”
Addressing the Israelis directly, Ayatollah Khatami added: “Now you want to get tangled up with Iran?! Be sure that, if you act foolishly and commit a blunder, Iran’s reaction to you will drive you crazy.”
Tehran Friday imam further said that Iran did not, on any account, recognize a people as Israelis and that the Iranian nation is “not at all” friends with the Israeli nation.
In a side reference to recent statements by Iran’s vice-president for cultural heritage, Ebrahim Rahim-Mashaei, who was quoted as saying that Iran was “friends with all people of the world, even the people of America and Israel,” Ayatollah Khatami said: “Such words are fundamentally wrong". He added: "We do not recognize a nation called Israel. There is one and only one nation, the Palestinian nation.”
Khatami explained that such remarks had left the wrong impression on the international community and that the person who made them “must take back his words and apologize to the great Iranian nation.”
The prayer leader ended his remarks by clarifying Iran’s decision-making process and position beyond any doubt.
“The doctrines and politics of the Islamic system are clear. No organ of this brave nation would allow anyone in a position of responsibility to say a word which contradicts the foreign policy doctrines as devised by the system’s imam and supreme leader of the revolution.”
Sources: IranVNC, Haaretz, IRNA in Persian
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