Press Release

Former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar spoke on May 16, 2012 at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
http://jcpa.org/
about his visit to Tehran on October 22-23, 2000 and his unscheduled meeting
with the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This was one of the
few meetings between Khamenei, who is the commander in chief of Iran's armed
forces, and a senior western leader.

The following quotations are excerpts from Aznar’s prepared remarks:

"Israel to him was a kind of historical cancer, an anomaly. A country to be
put in flames, and condemned to disappear…"

"In any case, at some point he said very clearly though softly as he spoke,
that a war against the U.S. and Israel was inevitable and that he was
working for Iran to prevail in such a confrontation. Actually it was his
duty as the ultimate vanguard of the Islamic global revolution."

Aznar Q & A:
Question: "You understood that he was basically saying, yes, our vision is
the destruction of Israel"

Aznar: "This is necessary to eliminate the risk, the threat that Israel
poses, and this means obviously the elimination of Israel, and the
elimination of the threat means that Israel must be eliminated"

Question: “He used the world eliminate?”

Aznar: “Finish, eliminate, end their history….”