The fundamentalist minority

I'm very sorry about what this fundamentalist moron who happens to be Iran's president has recently said. But I have to say he doesn't represent the way the majority in Iran think. This guy is a fraud and is a puppet of Mesbah-e Yazdi, a radical cleric who is only gaining power after Khomeini's death.

Ahmadinejad only represents a small number of radical clerics around Mesbah and some Revolutionary Guards commanders who benefit from violence and war. Ahmadinejad is an indirect result of America's policy shift against the reformists in Iran. Maybe they wanted this in the first place? Who knows.
However, the best indicator for me about the general attitude of Iranians towards Israel happened last year during the Olympic games when the Iranian Judoka refused to face his Israeli counterpart and eventually lost a medal. Average Iranians were quite angry about that and even in a poll I put on my Persian blog, the majority disagreed with the official policy of the Iranian regime.

Also, in a region where US is usually seen as the closest ally of Israel, Iranians has one the most positive attitudes towards the United States which is very likely to extend to Israel, despite all the government's propaganda.

Meanwhile, one neglected aspect of Ahmadinejad's comments could be a reaction to Supreme Leader Khamanei who has effectively kept the area of foreign policy totally out of Ahmadinejad's control, by appointing Ali Larijani, his trusted young ally, to be leading the nuclear negotiation team.

Interestingly, the current Foreign Minister, Manoochehr Mottaki, has been an old assistant to Larijani and this shows how influential Khamanei is. So this could be a challenge by Mesbah and his allies, including Ahmadinejad, to Khamanei's control on foreign policy.