Can he be more blunt than this?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis was to destroy Israel, Iranian state media reported.
In a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Malaysia, Ahmadinejad also called for an immediate cease-fire to end the fighting between Israel and the Iranian-back group Hezbollah.
“Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented,” Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report posted on its Web site.
So the stakes have been laid out pretty clearly now: when Israel says it’s in a battle for it’s survival, Iran’s President has in effect said: “You ain’t just whistling Sunrise Sunset…”
How blatant is it? So blatant that the French are condemning it:
France’s foreign minister condemned Ahmadinehjad’s comments Thursday, saying Iran is ruining its chances to play a positive and stabilizing role in the Middle East.
“I totally condemn these words,” Philippe Douste-Blazy said on France-Inter radio, saying they were “absolutely unacceptable on anyone’s part, especially from a head of state.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.