(5. März) ANN CURRY: We were able to find the tweet that he referred to from the supreme leader. It happened seven months ago, the supreme leader‘s– Twitter page has, quote, „This barbaric wolf-like and infanticidal regime of Israel which spares no crime, has no cure but to be annihilated.“ Mr. Foreign Minister, can you understand why Jews and others would take umbrage at that kind of language?

JAVAD ZARIF: No, I won‘t. Because this is a regime. We‘re talking about Mr. Netanyahu, who has– butchered– innocent children in Gaza. We are not talking about annihilation of Jews. We never have, we never will. Because if we wanted to annihilate Jews, we have a large number of Jewish population in Iran who not only live in the country in peace, but, in fact, have a representative in Iranian parliament allocated to them, disproportionately to their number. Every 150,000– Iranian Muslims has a representative in the parliament, whereas less than 20,000 Jews in Iran have a representative in the parliament. So we‘re not about annihilation of Jews. We have a history of tolerance and cooperation and living together in coexistence with our own Jewish people, and with– with Jews everywhere in the world. If people want to– espouse fear mongering to fan such hysteria in the world, that‘s– to their detriment. We have said, and we will continue to say, that the regime is a threat to regional peace. This is the only regime with nuclear weapons.