Lapid Wages War of Words with Iran FM

YERUSHALAYIM
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency via REUTERS)

The foreign ministers of Israel and Iran have faced off in the current spate of threats and counter-threats between their two countries.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian exchanged hostile tweets over the future of Israel and Iran.

Lapid on Tuesday responded to his counterpart’s statement that “Zionism has no place in the future of the world.”

“The extremist Iranian regime threatens Israel with annihilation but will continue to lose this battle,” Lapid wrote in his English tweet. “Their failed leadership is destroying Iran from within. In the words of the Iranian poet Saadi: ‘He whose essence is evil, will forever remain so.’

“Iranians should know that it is their regime that is making their lives miserable. The State of Israel is strong and will not allow its citizens to be harmed.”

The clash was prompted by Lapid’s remark in a Channel 12 interview on Friday, that “Israel has capabilities, some of which the world, and even some experts in the field, cannot even imagine. And Israel will protect itself against the Iranian threat.”

That provoked Amir-Abdollahian’s comment on Monday that “the disturbing remarks of the foreign minister of the fake Israeli regime against the great nation of Iran” were delusionary.

“We will forcefully and rationally defend the rights, interests and progress of the Iranian people,” he wrote in Persian, according to a translation by IFP media wire.

Last month, Iran’s state-affiliated Tehran Times published a map of Israel showing dozens of potential targets all over the country, indicating that Iranian forces can strike anywhere they want.

The map ran alongside a threatening front-page opinion piece headlined “Just one wrong move!”

 

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