Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked his regime’s annual anti-Israel rallies by saying that the only path for the Palestinians is resistance, not peace talks.
In his speech for Al Quds day, the last Friday in Ramadan launched by the late Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s as an anti-Israel rallying day, Ahmadinejad also said Israel was too “weak” to strike Iran.
Speculation has increased in recent weeks that Israel will strike Iran within a year to keep it from achieving a nuclear weapons capability.
A range of Iranian officials said renewed Palestinian-Israeli peace talks launched this week in Washington would come to naught.
Manouchehr Mottaki, the foreign minister, accused the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders of “betraying” their people by attending and sanctioning the talks. In retaliation, Egypt withdrew an invitation to Mottaki to attend a meeting of members of the non-aligned movement next week.
Iranian media predicted millions of Iranians would rally on Al-Quds day, named for the Arab term for Jerusalem.
“Today millions of people will shout out their will for liberation of the holy Quds from the devil’s claw of Zionists,” the Associated Press quoted the Fars news agency as saying.
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