Yes but its been a while since the leader has made remarks like that. Plus other recent events.
This is an incredible statement to make. Just imagine if Israel had said the same thing about Iran? - You have to remember this is just the Leader spouting what is the Govornment line, and has been so for years, from the "revolution" in fact. (1978iirc ?)
These people need to grasp the concept of peaceful co-existence!
It also depends on how you quantify what the real world is. Remember you are talking about an area of the world where civilisation was born. It is also the religious centre for at least three major religions.
The UK has a shorter civilised history and the US are still babies in comparison. Who is to say that how they behave is wrong? We are judging them by our standards - who is to say that they cannot judge us by their standards?
As for placating them and reducing the middle east to dust - do you have any idea how many Christians, Jews and Muslims around the world that might object to their religious centres being reduced to dust? A short answer would be approximately over 2 billion.
The middle east is a hugely difficult situation made even worse by western interference. It is a cross roads in the world and wherever you get a cross roads you will have people trying to control it.
The Afghanis poked the USSR and the vietnamese poked the US. Both times the major player lost dramatically. Again we call them nutters but what standard are we using?
For every picture/tv report etc you can show me showing Iranian nutters I could show you one of us western nutters. Including both of our respective "leaders" .
I would be very interested to understand the true Iranian peoples perspective but I fear that in their culture and society they may very well be prevented from expressing it.
:-/
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