Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei addressed a large group in Tehran earlier today. His comments, particularly about Israel, have gotten a lot of attention but have been variously quoted. This is how FARS, the more or less official Iranian news agency, reported them:
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei described Israel as a “fake” regime, and said there won’t be any Israel in 25 years from now.
“Some of the Zionists have said that given the results of the nuclear negotiations (between Tehran and the world powers), they have been relieved of concerns about Iran for 25 years, but we tell them that basically, you will not see the next 25 years and with God’s grace, nothing under the name of the Zionist regime will exist in the region by then,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, addressing a large number of Iranians in Tehran on Wednesday.
He added this, as quoted by Reuters:
Meanwhile, the heroic jihadi Islamic spirit will not leave the Zionists in peace for a second.
I would say, the heroic jihadi Islamic spirit plus $100 billion in unfrozen money.
As for Khamenei’s threat against Israel, my bigger concern is whether the United States will exist in recognizable form in 25 years, given not just Iran’s nuclear program, but its development of ICBMs. As we keep reminding our readers, Iran doesn’t need ICBMs to hit Israel with nuclear weapons. The ICBMs are intended to deliver nuclear payloads to New York, Washington, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
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