The Iranian Leadership's Continuing Declarations of Intent to Destroy Israel

From JCPA, 25 May 2012, by Joshua Teitelbaum and Michael Segall*:

　
• Iranian declarations calling for Israel's destruction are being voiced by a broad spectrum of the Iranian leadership, including different senior officers in the Revolutionary Guard.
• These spokesmen are not talking about a long historical process regarding Israel's elimination, but rather a development that is to take place in the near term.
• These calls for the destruction of Israel for the most part are not made in the context of an Iranian retaliatory strike, and are not contingent upon what actions Israel will take.
• Thus the problem is not just President Ahmadinejad, who will be out of office when his term ends in 2013, but rather with the entire present-day Iranian leadership.

*Prof. Joshua Teitelbaum, principal research fellow at the Jerusalem Center, is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Bar-Ilan University. Lt.-Col. (ret.) Michael (Mickey) Segall, a senior analyst at the Jerusalem Center, is a former IDF military intelligence officer.
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