Special Dispatch No. 5390
Iranian Official: If Attacked, We'll Destroy Tel Aviv, Haifa With Our 2,500km-Range Missiles; No Iranian – Not Even The President – Is Entitled To Take A Position Against Khamenei's
On June 27, 2013, in speeches in Rasht, in northern Iran, Assembly of Experts member and Tehran Friday prayer leader Ahmad Khatami warned president-elect Hassan Rohani that if he took positions opposed to those of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei he would lose the regime's support. He stressed the supremacy of the Rule of the Jurisprudent, even over the will of the people, and stated that the meaning of faith in God is loyalty to Khamenei.
Khatami also reiterated the regime's position that the source of the dispute with the West over Iran's nuclear program is the West's attempts to oust the regime of the Islamic Revolution, and disclosed that Iran possesses missiles with 2,500-km range that would destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran.
Clarifying that that Tehran assists any Palestinian organization that wages an armed struggle against Israel, Khatami expressed satisfaction that the Iranian Fajr-5 missiles provided by Iran to Hamas and Islamic Jihad had struck Tel Aviv during Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012.
Following are excerpts from Khatami's statements:
Special Dispatch No. 5389
Iran Jewish Community Official To Ahmadinejad: Stop Denying The Holocaust
On July 10, 2013, the Iranian reformist daily Shargh published an article by Jewish Central Committee of Tehran head Haroun Yeshaya, focusing mainly on criticism of the most recent instance of Holocaust denial by Iran's outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad had made the statements in his July 7, 2013 farewell speech in Tehran, in which he set out in detail the achievements of his government and policy.
In that speech, Ahmadinejad said: "I raised the topic of the Holocaust from a humane stance, and I said: Let's assume that it happened; why should the Palestinians be punished because of it?'... "[My] raising of the topic of the Holocaust shattered the spinal column of the capitalist order, because this [topic] is the only element that remains sacred to this order... The only focus that they [i.e. the capitalist order] were all fanatical about, and that no one could touch, was the topic of the Holocaust. But I spoke of it as a member of the Basij [i.e. as a fighter], unrestrainedly."
In his criticism of this Holocaust denial statement by Ahmadinejad, Yeshaya does not refer to the numerous other such statements by Ahmadinejad, or by other regime officials, but treats this single instance as a one-off occurrence and as reflecting only Ahmadinejad's personal view. By doing so, he exonerates the Iranian regime of maintaining a policy of exporting antisemitism globally.
It is our assessment that the regime approved this atypical article for publication in the Iranian media at this time – that is, at the close of the Ahmadinejad era and by a member of the Jewish community – due to the regime's wish to distance itself from Ahmadinejad after his term is over, and its desire to seem moderate and to appear unconnected to the its own dissemination of antisemitism. This, in turn, is against the backdrop of president-elect Hassan Rohani's more moderate approach to the international community, and his intention to reap benefits from it.
Following are excerpts from the article by Jewish Central Committee of Tehran head Haroun Yeshaya:
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