Iranian Supreme Leader slams UN, Israel
Published August 30, 2012
(JTA) — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slammed the United Nations Security Council and blasted Israel in a speech to the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran.
Khamenei made his remarks Thursday to delegates of the 120-member movement, as well as in front of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The remarks came a day after Khamenei met with Ban, who spoke to the supreme leader about making Iran’s nuclear program more transparent, about how to repair Iran’s human rights record, and asked Iranian leaders to tone down the rhetoric on Israel, the New York Times reported.
Khameni called the Israeli leadership “bloodthirsty wolves” in Thursday’s speech. He has also called Israel, known as the Zionist entity, a cancer that needs to be excised from the body of the Middle East. He also deplored what he called the “overt dictatorship” of the Security Council.
Ban attended the summit despite strenuous objections from Israel, as well as from the United States and other western nations.
Khamenei also told the summit that Iran has never sought nuclear weapons, and plans to develop its nuclear energy program, calling the use of nuclear weapons “a big and unforgivable sin, according to the Times.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi also addressed the summit Thursday, on the first visit to Iran by an Egyptian leader in more than 30 years.
During his speech, Morsi called for “reform in the Security Council in order for it to be more representative of the new world order of the 21st century and not a reflection of the 20th century.”
He expressed Egypt’s “solidarity with the struggle of the Syrian people against an oppressive regime that has lost its legitimacy” and called for “a peaceful transition to a democratic system of rule that reflects the demands of the Syrian people for freedom.” The Syrian delegation walked out during these remarks, Al-Jazeera reported.
He also reiterated his Muslim Brotherhood-backed party’s support for a Palestinian state and called for a comprehensive solution that will support the right of the Palestinian people to decide their own future and to establish their free state on their own soil.”
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