TEHRAN — Iran’s highest authority lashed out against Israel on Friday with some of his harshest comments in recent memory about the Jewish state.
Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the black-turbaned ayatollah who is Iran’s top political and military figure, said his country’s hostility to Israel extended beyond the government to the Israeli people as well. In doing so, he brushed aside recent overtures by top Iranian officials to ordinary people in the Jewish state.
Khamenei said Iran and Israel were on a “collision course,” a statement that could increase tensions in a Middle East already fearful of a conflict between the countries.
“Who are Israelis?” Khamenei told thousands of worshipers gathered for Friday prayers in downtown Tehran. “They are responsible for usurping houses, territory, farmlands and businesses. They are combatants at the disposal of Zionist operatives. A Muslim nation cannot remain indifferent vis-u-vis such people who are stooges at the service of the arch-foes of the Muslim world.”
Iran and Israel are locked in a war of words. Israel accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons under the guise of a peaceful energy program and supporting anti-Israeli militant groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Iran’s leaders have called for the destruction of the Jewish state, which they consider a Western colonial outpost.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive in New York within days for the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly, which probably will take up the issue of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Iranian officials typically increase anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian rhetoric in the week before the last Muslim Sabbath in the holy month of Ramadan, which is called Jerusalem Day in Iran. This year, it falls on Friday.
