Israel would "soon go to hell," Iran’s hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday, calling on the West to drop support for the Jewish state. "Grounds are being prepared for the Zionist regime to go to hell soon, and any country supporting this regime will join it on its trip to hell as well," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in in north-western Iran, carried live by a TV network. The remarks by Ahmadinejad came in the wake of last week’s visit to Lebanon, in which Ahmadinejad lent his support to what he called Lebanon's resistance of Israeli aggression.
On Thursday, Ahmadinejad had toured the border region in southern Lebanon, the heartland of the militant Hezbollah movement, and addressed a crowd of some 15,000 supporters. “The whole world knows that the Zionists are going to disappear," the Iranian leader said in the village of Bint Jbeil. "The occupying Zionists today have no choice but to accept reality and go back to their countries of origin," he added.
On the issue of Iran's nuclear program, Ahmadinejad said that "holding talks with Iran is the best choice for you (international community). You have no other option. All the other ways are closed. You know the fact very well," he was quoted by Iranian state media as saying. "The Iranian nation will not give up an iota of its international rights,” he emphasized. However, he signaled readiness to engage in talks with the Group of Six Nations over the nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad said the United States would one day apologize and "beg" Tehran that the two countries resume diplomatic relations. The Obama administration had become so weakened that it could not harm Iran in any way, he claimed.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Lebanon was “rapidly becoming a new satellite of Iran. It is a tragedy for Lebanon," he said on Sunday.
