Iran’s president said on Monday Israel would soon disappear off the map and that the ”satanic power” of the United States faced destruction, in his latest verbal attack on the Islamic Republic’s arch-foes. Opposition to Israel is a fundamental principle in Shi’ite Muslim Iran, which backs Palestinian militants opposed to peace.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could ”totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel. Clinton said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian attack.
Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday reaffirmed his doubts about the accepted version of the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, describing the strikes as a ”suspect event”. ”Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New York,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech to a public rally in the holy city of Qom.