Karim Sadjadpour, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes about Iran’s vehemently anti-Israel stance:
When I was based in Tehran with the International Crisis Group, and frequently interviewing Iranian officials, I used to believe that Iran would be capable of altering its approach towards Israel in the context of a broader US-Iran accommodation.
I no longer believe this to be the case.
Tune out the rantings of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and focus on the most powerful man in Tehran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, whose writings and speeches are the most accurate reflection of Iranian domestic and foreign policy aims and practices.
[…]And, remarkably, the issue that has featured most prominently in his political discourse during his tenure as leader has been his opposition to Israel’s existence. Whether his audience is Iranian students or foreign dignitaries, or the topic of his speech is foreign policy, education or agriculture, he rarely misses an opportunity to invoke the professed virtues of the 1979 revolution—justice, independence, self-sufficiency and Islam—and to express his deep disdain for “the Zionist entity.”
Read the full article here.