One of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s deputies made a rare claim that Iran feels friendship toward Israel.
“Today Iran is friendly with the peoples of America and Israel,” Esfandiyar Rahim Masha’i, Iran’s vice president in charge of tourism and cultural affairs, said Sunday.
“No people in the world is our enemy and this is a source of pride,” he said at a tourism fair in Tehran.
The comments clashed with the long-standing policy of President Ahmadinejad and the rest of Iran’s Islamist leadership of refusing coexistence with Israel.
By refering to the “people” of Israel, Masha’i may have been saying that Iran has no problem with Jews — only the Jewish state.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
