Peres: World Leaders Must Encourage Iranians to Revolt

Thursday, 18 October 2012
President says Iranian people must overthrow Ayatollan regime; deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warns strike would speed up Israeli regime's annihilation; Ahmadinejad: US influence waning due to massive debt.

President Shimon Peres called on world leaders to encourage the Iranian people to rise up against and overthrow the Ayatollan regime.

"We would all be happy if the Iranian regime were to fall from the high and dangerous tree that it has climbed up," Peres told Army Radio.

"Of course, we must also encourage the Iranian nation to return to itself," he added.

The president's comments came as Iranian leaders warned that the downfall of both Israel and the US was imminent.

Deputy Commander of the Revolutionary Guard Brig.-Gen. Hossein Salami said Israel was highly vulnerable to an Iranian military attack, according to Iran's state-run Press TV.

“Following the infiltration of Hezbollah’s drone into the [airspace of the] occupied lands, the Zionist regime came to the understanding that such psychological warfare has not yielded any result but instead led to the strengthening of the determination of its enemies and now the Islamic Revolution has the upper hand over the Zionist regime,” Salami said.

Last week, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah took credit for sending a drone aircraft into Israel, saying in a televised speech on the Al- Manar station that the aircraft was Iranian-made. Iranian officials have touted the infiltration of Israeli airspace, with the country’s Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi calling it Hezbollah's "natural right" and saying that the move has “shown the weakness of the Zionist Regime’s Iron Dome.”

Israel's defense strategy is feeble, Salami said according to the Press TV report. He added that “the regime’s defense mechanisms are highly vulnerable to all-out strikes by Iran.”

Salami also warned the West against initiating a strike on its nuclear program, saying such an attack would only speed up the Israeli regimes annihilation, according to the Press TV report.

Ahmadinejad predicts downfall of US

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted the impending downfall of the "US empire," blaming the collapse on a combination of the country's massive debt and its loss of legitimacy within the international community, Iran's official news agency IRNA reported Thursday.

“How long can a government with a $16,000 trillion foreign debt remain a world power?” he asked at a press conference with Kuwaiti media personnel. "The Americans have injected their paper wealth into the world economy and today the aftermaths and negative effects of their pseudo-wealth have plagued them.”

He added: “An empire, or a government, remains in power so long as the people under its power support it, but today the Americans have acted in a way that the world nations do not like them at all, and therefore, their international legitimacy is annihilated.”

Ahmadinejad also predicted that the West would soon drop their alliance with the "Zionist regime," saying that Westerners and US politicians are increasingly "at a loss" as to why Israel exists.

Downplaying the effect of Western sanctions on the Iranian economy, Ahmadinejad said that the Islamic Republic would persevere. "The hegemonic powers have no way [forward], but to change the conditions.” Earlier this month, riots broke out in Tehran in protest of the collapse of the rial currency, which has lost some two-thirds of its value against the dollar in the past 15 months, stoking inflation that is now running at around 25 percent.

Despite his country's reeling economy, Ahmadinejad questioned who was really suffering under the sanctions. "These sanctions are in fact imposed against the European countries," he charged. "It has now been five years that they have imposed sanctions against Iran, but the question is, which one is experiencing tougher economic conditions, the EU, or the Islamic Republic?”

Earlier this week, the EU agreed to impose further sanctions against Iran's banking, shipping, and industrial sectors, cranking up financial pressure on Tehran in the hope of drawing it into serious negotiations on its nuclear program.

Turning to his country's illicit nuclear program, Ahmadinejad termed Western pressure as "boring," and expressed that his country would proceed in its drive for a peacefully nuclear program. “Due to the political approach of the world oppressor powers, the Iranian nuclear issue has become a boring issue. Today everyone knows that the westerners are basically opposed to the advancement of the Iranian nation and even if the nuclear issue would be solved they would resort to another pretext, such as Iran’s manufacturing of satellites, or even production of medicines, or becoming a space power, to interfere in our internal affairs.”

Addressing increasing speculation that the Persian Gulf could become a flashpoint for violence between the West and Iran, Ahmadinejad said his country would respond to any threats posed against it. “I do not think such a war would occur, because we all contribute to the establishment of security in this region, but at any rate when the United States make some threats, Iran, too, responses to them. Everyone knows that it is not possible to urge the Iranian nation to retreat resorting to war threat.”

*Reuters contributed to this report

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