Ahmadinejad Says 'Israel Unable To Take On Iran'

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad boasted Friday that Israel is not powerful enough to take on Iran, currently at loggerheads with the international community over its nuclear program. ‘Thanks be to God, despite its criminal and savage nature, the Zionist regime and its supporters in the West do not have the power to look in the same way towards Iran,’ the ultra-conservative president said in a speech in the provinces. He was speaking as Israel continued its offensive on Lebanon sparked by the capture Wednesday by Iranian-backed Hezbollah militiamen of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others. ‘Attacks by the Zionist regime against its neighbors, notably Lebanon, Syria and its threats against other countries in the region are due to the fact that this puppet regime cannot live normally,’ IRNA reported Ahmadinejad as saying. ‘This situation cannot last, and one day the protectors of the Zionist regime -- the US in particular -- will have to explain themselves and be judged by the conscience of humanity,’ he added.
Ahmadinejad also said the ‘Zionists and their protectors are the people held in most contempt by humanity’ and promised their ‘rapid downfall’. ‘The more their crimes increase, the harder their fall will be,’ he said.