A senior Iranian official has rejected the claim by British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond that Iran’s government has shown more nuance towards Israel, calling instead for the annihilation of the Jewish State.

“Our positions against the usurper Zionist regime have not changed at all. Israel should be annihilated and this is our ultimate slogan,” Hussein Sheikholeslam, a foreign affairs adviser to Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani, told reporters, the Fars News Agency reported.

On Monday, Hammond, on a visit in Tehran to reopen the British embassy in the Iranian capital, suggested that the current Iranian government under President Hassan Rouhani has shown a more nuanced approach towards Israel than the leadership of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“What we’re looking for is behavior from Iran, not only towards Israel but towards other players in the region, that slowly rebuilds their sense that Iran is not a threat to them,” Hammond said.

The British Minister also said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s “revolutionary sloganizing” should be distinguished from “what Iran actually does in the conduct of its foreign policy.”

“We’ve got to, as we do with quite a number of countries, distinguish the internal political consumption rhetoric from the reality of the way they conduct their foreign policy,” daily The Guardian quoted Hammond as saying.

Earlier this month, Sheikholeslam told a news outlet earlier that Iran has resisted pressure exerted by the P5+1 world powers during the nuclear negotiations to halt its political involvement in Gaza, Syria and Yemen.

“These powers admitted that the reason for their pressure on us is our position on Israel,” he said. “We told them that we reject the existence of any Israeli on this earth.”

In London, The Times reported Wednesday morning that a US think tank has revealed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has placed commanders at the heart of more than 200 Iranian companies, which stand to benefit from UK investment once sanctions on Iran are lifted in accordance with the nuclear deal. The report warns that “Western companies may be unaware that their Iranian partner has a connection to the IRGC,” which is set to benefit from expected investment.

The IRGC is a direct sponsor of terror groups including Hezbollah, is a close ally of Syria’s President Assad and is thought to coordinate terror attacks abroad.