Rafsanjani: Israel Will Be Wiped Off The Map....With Nukes Or A Bucket?

Former Iranian President Rafsanjani

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is a former "centrist" Iranian president and is the current head of the country’s Expediency Discernment Council, the advisory body to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. He is known to be a longtime friend of current President Hassan Rouhani.

In an interview with a Hizballah-linked news website yesterday, Rafsanjani reiterated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's infamous 2005 call (and yes, he DID say it) to "wipe Israel off the map". Rafsanjani said he believes that one day “the forged and temporary Israeli entity, which is an alien existence forged into the body of a nation and region,” will be “wiped off the map."

Rafsanjani went on, hilariously, to deny that Iran is after nuclear weapons, despite the fact that the entire world knows that they are.

The statements are also noteworthy because of Rafsanjani's previous statements and activities. In 2001, he delivered a sermon in which he explained that nuclear weapons could solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, since “[t]he use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam." Argentinian lawyer Alberto Nisman has also exposed Rafsanjani's culpability in numerous terrorist atrocities, including a bombing in 1994 which killed 85 people (see page 22 of the attached report), as well as multiple assassinations of his foreign political opponents (pp.172-73).

Nisman, incidentally, was himself assassinated - possibly by the Argentinian government - for making these revelations.

But hey, maybe Rafsanjani doesn't really want nuclear weapons. There are other ways to kill Jews, after all. His association with Hizballah is one clue that nukes aren't necessarily his only option when it comes to the "Israeli problem".

The Ayatollah Khomeini himself once said: "If Muslims got together and each poured one bucket of water on Israel, a flood would wash away Israel."

If such an eventually ever arises, I am sure Rafsanjani would be at the front of the queue on his way to the well.