[NYer]

FULL TEXT

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 26 minutes ago

The president of Iran again lashed out at Israel on Friday and said it was "heading toward annihilation," just days after Tehran raised fears about its nuclear activities by saying it successfully enriched uranium for the first time.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a "permanent threat" to the Middle East that will "soon" be liberated. He also appeared to again question whether the Holocaust really happened.

"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

Ahmadinejad provoked a world outcry in October when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

On Friday, he repeated his previous line on the Holocaust, saying: "If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?"

The land of Palestine, he said, referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, "will be freed soon."

He did not say how this would be achieved, but insisted to the audience of at least 900 people: "Believe that Palestine will be freed soon."

"The existence of this (Israeli) regime is a permanent threat" to the Middle East, he added. "Its existence has harmed the dignity of Islamic nations."

The three-day conference on Palestine is being attended by officials of Hamas, the ruling party in the Palestinian territories.

Iran has previously said it will give money to the Palestinian Authority to make up for the withdrawal of donations by Western nations who object to Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence. But no figure has been published.

On Tuesday, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had successfully enriched uranium using a battery of 164 centrifuges, a significant step toward the large-scale production of enriched uranium required for either fueling nuclear reactors or making nuclear weapons.

The United States, France and Israel accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear program to secretly build a weapon. Iran denies this, saying its program is confined to generating electricity.

The U.N. Security Council has given Iran until April 28 to cease enrichment. But Iran has rejected the demand.

The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, was quoted Wednesday as saying Iran could develop a nuclear bomb "within three years, by the end of the decade."

[soycd]

Time for the two-step solution.

1. Ship anyone in America with "free palestine" banners to iran.
2. Bomb the mulla running iran into the stone age.

[tet68]

Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

This could only mean a massive attack with perhaps multiple
devices....at least as far as I'm concerned.

[ccmay]

Its existence has harmed the dignity of Islamic nations.

I didn't realize the miserable sh*t-holes had any such thing.

-ccm

[Lurker]

"Its existence has harmed the dignity of Islamic nations."

It's impossible to harm something one never had.

L

[jonrick46]

Did anyone notice that this Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nutcase say that the Jews took over land that was owned by the Palistinians. This did not happen. The land was purchased at highly inflated prices from absentee landlords who lived in other countries. As Jewish immigrants came in from such places as Russia in the early 1900s, the land was transformed out of the desert. It quickly prospered. Soon, the prosperity attracted workers from surrounding Arab countries to work the land. Palistine was the name used by the British when they were given the mandate to rule it after World War I; even though most Arab countries refused to identify this land as Palistine and preferred to call it Judea and Samaria. Jordan called the area the "West Bank." Everyone--Jews Christians, Muslims and etc.--who lived in this region was called themselves Palistinians. Palistine was not the exclusive property of one people.

[urban_commando]

its unfair;
if americans want to have nuclear bomb its ok, but a small country wanting to be independent has resources to make one, America and the world gets finicky, why cant america clean up before it goes saber rattling