In a rant that reeked of old-fashioned anti-Semitism, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that the "Zionist regime" was seeking to control the world.
Addressing the International Conference on National and Islamic Solidarity for Future of Palestine, Ahmadinejad said that the existence of the "Zionist regime" is an insult to all of humanity, asserting that it had lost its raison d'être.
He said it was "well-known for all that the Zionist regime’s mission is threat, violence and beating drums of war," according to an IRNA translation.
"Supporters of the Zionist regime who are shouting slogans of human rights and anti-terrorism, support systematic crimes of the occupying regime," he said at the Teheran conference, adding that "everybody knows that the regime is seeking hegemony over the world."
He said that the "Zionist regime" is the "origin of all the wars, genocide, terrors and crimes against humanity" and that they are "the racist group not respecting the human principles."
"With God's grace and thanks to the Palestinian resistance the occupying Zionist regime has lost its raison d'être," Ahmadinejad continued. "The only way to confront them (Israelis) is through the Palestinian youths' resistance, and that of the regional nations.”
Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdullah Shalah and the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Ahmed Jibril were among those in attendance at the conference.