President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Europe on Friday that continued support for Israel could lead to an act of revenge by those in the Middle East angry about the Palestinians' plight.
He issued the warning at a critical time; the UN Security Council is expected to begin public deliberations next week on whether to impose sanctions on Iran for defying a UN resolution to suspend uranium-enrichment activities by the end of August.
"People in the region blame you for any crime or invasion against any country and will take revenge on you," Ahmadinejad said, addressing countries in the EU.
"You should know that the rage of people is boiling and is like an ocean that is welling up," he said in his speech at a rally in Tehran.
"Once its storm begins blowing, it will go beyond the borders of Lebanon and Palestine, and it will hurt European countries," he added, without describing what revenge would entail.
Ahmadinejad made his comments at a rally called for Je-rusalem Day, held every year on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan in support of the Palestinian struggle against Israel. Ahmadinejad told tens of thousands of demonstrators that Israel could not last long after its battle this summer against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
"Hezbollah shattered the myth that Israel is undefeatable," he said. "Now Israel has no reason to exist."
State-run television showed tens of thousands of demonstrators around the country who chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." People carried pictures of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and burned US and Israeli flags.
In recent months, Ahmadinejad has caused international outrage by questioning the Holocaust and saying that "Israel should be wiped off the map," a slogan used often by the father of the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
On Friday, Ahmadinejad talked again about the Holocaust, saying: "Even if we assume that 6 million Jews were killed in World War II, how come you don't have sympathy for the other 54 million who were killed, too? It is not even clear who counted those you have sympathy for."
He said Israel has effectively held European countries hostage for what happened during World War II.
Television reports also showed demonstrators chanting in support of Iran's nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad repeated on Friday that Iran would not give in to international demands to suspend its uranium-enrichment program and dismissed UN efforts to impose sanctions on Iran.
"They want to use the Security Council as an instrument to put pressure on our people," he said.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president, warned Western countries that sanctions on Iran would have serious consequences.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS