NYT : Iran’s President Warns Israel’s Allies

Iran’s President Warns Israel’s Allies

By NAZILA FATHI | October 20, 2006

TEHRAN, Oct. 20 — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned today that Western countries, particularly in Europe, will be hurt by popular fury caused by their support of Israel.

Referring to European nations, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, “People in the region blame you for any crime or invasion against any country, and will take revenge on you.”

“You should know that the rage of people is boiling and is like an ocean that is welling up,” he said in a speech broadcast nationally on radio. “Once its storm begins blowing, it will go beyond the borders of Lebanon and Palestine, and it will hurt European countries.”

The occasion for the speech was Qods (Jerusalem) Day, which Iran marks on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan each year in support of Palestinian resistance against Israel.

Mr. Ahmadinejad told tens of thousands of demonstrators in Tehran that Israel could not last long after its experience in fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon over the summer.

“Hezbollah shattered the myth that Israel is undefeatable,” he said. “Now Israel has no reason to exist.”

State-run television showed images of thousands of demonstrators around the country, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” People carried pictures of Sheik Hassan Nassrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and set fire to American and Israeli flags.

In his Qods Day speech last year, Mr. Ahmadinejad provoked international outrage when he said that the Holocaust was a myth, and repeated a slogan from the leader of the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, saying “Israel should be wiped off the map.”

He repeated his allegations about the Holocaust today, and said of the West, “Even if we assume that 6 million Jews were killed in World War II, how come you don’t sympathize for the other 54 million who were killed as well? It is not even clear who counted those you sympathize for.”

He went on to say that Israel had held European countries hostage over what happened in the 1940’s.

Television news programs today also showed images of demonstrators chanting in support of Iran’s nuclear program.

Mr. Ahmadinejad repeated his position that Iran will not give in to international demands that it suspend its uranium enrichment program, and dismissed efforts by the United Nations to impose sanctions on Iran. “They want to use the Security Council as an instrument to put pressure on our people,” he said. “But thank God, they will never succeed.”

“Such decisions are illegitimate,” he added.

A former president of Iran, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, also warned Western countries today that sanctions against Iran would have serious consequences for Europeans as well as Iranians. “I advise them not to implement the harmful decision they have made over Iran’s nuclear program,” he said at a rally in the capital. “The decision will have harmful consequences for the region, for them, as well as our country.”

Mr. Rafsanjani is the first prominent official here to acknowledge publicly that sanctions would harm Iran. Though he has backed Iran’s nuclear program in public speeches, he is seen as a moderate who is thought to favor policies that would lessen the chance of a confrontation with the West.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, by contrast, said last week that Iran would welcome sanctions because they would give local industries a chance to grow without competition from imported goods.

Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, Emyr Jones Parry, said European countries hoped to circulate a draft resolution calling for sanctions against Iran early next week, Reuters reported. The proposed sanctions are expected to be limited in scope, aimed mainly at curbing Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs.

Iran’s foreign ministry responded said in a statement today that Iran will not “remain idle if sanctions are imposed.”

“It is big miscalculation to think the policy of carrot and stick can be pursued at the same time,” the statement said, according to the ISNA student news agency.