Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Iran, Israel on ‘collision course’

TEHRAN — Iran’s highest authority lashed out against Israel today with some of his harshest comments about the Jewish state in recent memory.

Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the black-turbaned ayatollah who is Iran’s top political and military figure, said that Iran’s hostility to Israel extended to the Israeli people, as well as the government, brushing aside recent peaceful overtures by top Iranian officials to ordinary people in the Jewish state.

Khamenei said Iran and Israel were on a “collision course,” a statement that could increase tensions in a Middle East already fearful of a conflict breaking out between the countries.

“Who are Israelis?” Khamenei told thousands of worshipers gathered for Friday prayers in downtown Tehran. “They are responsible for usurping houses, territory, farmlands and business. They are combatants at the disposal of Zionist operatives. A Muslim nation cannot remain indifferent vis-à-vis such people who are stooges at the service of the arch-foes of the Muslim world.”

Iran and Israel are locked in a war of words. Israel accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons under the guise of a peaceful energy program and supporting anti-Israeli militant groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories. Iran’s leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of the Jewish state, which they consider a Western colonial outpost.

The comments came amid a storm of controversy in Iran surroundin… >>>

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