Middle East

IRAN TELLS HAMAS TO 'KEEP UP RESISTANCE'
June 3, 2008
The Jerusalem Post reports:

“Incoming Iranian parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, spoke to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh Tuesday morning and expressed faith in Hamas's regime in the Gaza Strip, Army Radio reported. ‘If you keep up the resistance you will succeed in being victorious,’ Larijani told Haniyeh. In response, Haniyeh asserted that ‘[Hamas] will never stop battling the Zionist enemy.’ Haniyeh added that US plans for the region were doomed to fail.
Meanwhile, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said US President George W. Bush and his advisors act like mentally ill people.

‘Look at the behavior of the US president and members of his team, their words are like those of the mentally ill,’ said Khamenei, who has final say on all matters in Iran, on Tuesday at a ceremony honoring the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic.
‘Sometimes they threaten, sometimes they order assassinations ... and sometimes they ask for help - it's like mad people staggering to and fro,’ he said. Khamenei said the erratic behavior of the US leader is rooted in the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and he urged nations to resist American bullying.

Khamenei also declared that his country will continue with its nuclear program, but rejected nuclear weapons. ‘Iran is after the peaceful use of nuclear energy and we will strongly pursue and reach it despite of the envy of our enemies,’ he said. ‘No wise nation is interested in making a nuclear weapon,’ since it is not logical and cannot be used…”