Ayatollah: Israel 'won't be around in 25 years!'

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Just as Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reminds the world that his Islamic regime seeks the destruction of Israel, newly reported satellite images show Tehran has established a base in Syria to house missiles capable of hitting Israel.

That encroachment crosses a "red line" for the Israeli government, reported the Daily Telegraph of London.

Meanwhile, in a series of Twitter messages Thursday, Khamenei reiterated his warning that Israel won't be around much longer.

"Some years ago, the Zionist regime claimed it would do this or that to Iran within 25 years of time," the ayatollah wrote. "I said at that time, 'They won't be around in 25 years!'"

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, commented Thursday that if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said something like that about Iran "all hell would break loose, but no one will take any particular notice of this."

In another tweet Thursday, Khamenei expressesd to Muslims the hope that they will one day gather to pray in "Quds," the Islamic name for Jerusalem.

The message is clear to Muslims that he is referring to a Jerusalem "liberated" from Israel and the Jews, as other leaders have explicitly stated.

Khamenei wrote: "We hope we all see the day you perform collective (jama'at) prayers in Quds. That day will not be far; it will come soon. #Palestine."

Iran's clear intentions for Israel, combined with the charters of the Palestinian ruling parties Fatah and Hamas calling for the elimination of the Jewish state, pose a challenge to any effort to negotiate peace in the Holy Land.

Some years ago, the Zionist regime claimed it would do this or that to Iran within 25 years of time. I said at that time, "They won't be around in 25 years!"

— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) March 1, 2018

President Trump has made son-in-law Jared Kushner the point man in an effort to bring Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu to the negotiating table.

The White House's removal of Kushner's top-secret security clearance has grabbed headlines in recent days. But Frank Gaffney, president and CEO of Center for Security Policy, said Thursday that "even more problematic is Jared’s reported proposal for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

A report Wednesday in the Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, which cites "knowledgeable Arab diplomatic sources," indicates the Kushner blueprint for the so-called "deal of the century" inevitably would create a new terrorist-sponsoring state.

The report said the Trump administration proposes a state of "Palestine" would get some of East Jerusalem as its capital, control of high ground in the disputed territories known as the West Bank and $40 billion in start-up money.

"Such a plan would mortally weaken Israel and won't conduce to peace," said Gaffney on his "Secure Freedom Minute" radio feature.

"To the contrary, it will only embolden her myriad enemies, quite possibly triggering an all-too-imminent regional war."

Kushner's top-secret clearance was taken away after months of delays in completing his background check. He now has access only up to the level of "secret."

The Times of Israel cited former U.S. negotiators who said that while Kushner's loss of top-secret clearance diminishes him abroad, it won't be the factor that makes or breaks his Middle East peace effort.

"The fact that he has no clearance above secret will make absolutely no difference in terms of the results, because the problem in this case is not Jared Kushner's access or lack of access to classified information," said Aaron David Miller, who worked on the Israeli-Palestinian portfolio for the State Department under multiple administrations.

Miller told the Times of Israel that when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, it is "the inability of two guys to make the kinds of choices and decisions that would allow a third party, namely Mr. Kushner, to push them and support them as they move toward a negotiated agreement," referring to Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Morton A. Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, who issued an assessment of the contours of the proposal as reported by the Saudi newspaper, said he hopes the report is false, but if true, his organization strongly urges the Trump administration "to rethink this disaster and go back to the drawing board."

"After the Iran deal, we don't need to create another catastrophic, destabilizing Middle East deal," he said, referring to the nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama administration. "We strongly urge the Trump administration to also insist that before any peace plan can be placed on the table, agreed to and implemented, the PA must end its anti-Israel incitement, terrorism and heinous $365 million per year of payments to terrorists to murder Jews, for at least a year, to demonstrate that the PA is willing to live in peace with the Jewish state."

Reporting the evidence of Iran's missile base near Damascus, the Telegraph said Israel has largely stayed out of the seven-year-old Syrian war but has established a series of "red lines" to limit the presence in Syria of both Iran and its proxy group Hezbollah.

One of those red lines is aimed at prevent Iran from using its alliance with the Bashar al-Assad regime to establish any permanent military bases in Syria.

"Iran continues to try to cross those red lines," said Netanyahu at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 18.

"Israel will not allow the Iranian regime to put a noose of terror around our neck."

Netanyahu: 'Stop calling for Israel's destruction'

For the past 20 years, the "two-state solution" has been at the centerpiece of U.S. policy, with Washington presenting nine different peace plans between 1979 and 2013.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu at the White House Feb. 15, 2017.

One year ago, in his first visit to the White House, Netanyahu made it clear the starting point for discussing peace is to do away with "labels" such as "two states" and deal with "substance."

The substance, Netanyahu said, is two "prerequisites" for peace that the Palestinians have not fulfilled, he said at a joint news conference with President Trump in the White House's East Room.

The first is that they must recognize the Jewish state.

"They have to stop calling for Israel's destruction. They have to stop educating their people for Israel's destruction," said Netanyahu.

Secondly, he said, Israel must retain the "overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River," the West Bank.

"If we don't, we know what will happen," he said. "Because otherwise we'll get another radical Islamic terrorist state in the Palestinian areas, exploding the peace, exploding the Middle East."

'Peace talks' have only increased violence

Caroline Glick, a former foreign policy adviser to Netanyahu and a core member of the Israeli peace negotiating team from 1994 to 1996, notes in her book "The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East" that American efforts "to implement the two-state solution have all been dismal failures."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Wikipedia)

With each new attempt, Glick continues, "the Middle East has become less stable, more violent, more radicalized, and more inimical to American values and interests."

She proposes "the application of Israeli law — and through it Israeli sovereignty — over the West Bank of the Jordan River," arguing it is "a viable, realistic option" that is "fair, liberal, and democratic."

Skeptics of such a one-state plan fear it would weaken Israel's Jewish and democratic character.

Glick argues among things that there have been errors in counting the numbers of Jews and Arabs in the region, and polling data has been dismissed that shows an affinity among Palestinians for Israeli democratic governance.

Glick, a senior fellow for Middle East affairs at the Center for Security Policy, was a leading critic of the Iran nuclear deal when it was being debated in Congress in 2015.

During that debate, the Obama administration was in the bizarre position of acting as an agent for the mullah-led regime, Glick said in a briefing on Capitol Hill in August 2015 attended by WND.

"They actually have to be apologists for Iran toward the American people – hide Iranian threats to the United States, from the American public, because if they don’t do that, then they cannot justify their policy," she said of the Departments of State and Justice in particular.