Tehran, January 27: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is confident the region will one day watch the end of the “Zionist regime”, his website Wednesday quoted him as saying.
Officials in Iran generally believe in the ‘One-State Solution’, where Israelis and Palestinians live peacefully in one democratic state, comparing the “destruction of the Zionist regime” phrase to the dismantling of the former Soviet Union regime.
Khamenei made the remark during a meeting with Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz in Tehran, the website said.
The all-powerful Iranian leader also said that Israel’s continued “pressure to erase Palestine from the world of Islamic nations” will fail.
“Surely, the day will come when the nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime… when the destruction happens will depend on how the Muslim nations approach the issue,” Khamenei told Aziz, who arrived in Tehran on Monday.
“The Zionist regime, by continuing to use pressure, blockades and committing genocide, wants to erase Palestine… but it will not succeed.”
Praising Mauritania for cutting its ties with Israel, Khamenei said the “Zionist regime is a great danger to the Muslim world as it was thinking of expanding its influence and grip on the region every day.”
Israel shut down its embassy in Nouakchott following Mauritania’s decision in January 2009 to suspend diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv a decade after they were launched.
Mauritania was one of only three Arab nations that had formal diplomatic ties with Israel, apart from Egypt and Jordan.
—Agencies