PLO’s Tehran envoy says he hopes Iran will produce 1,000 nukes

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s envoy to Tehran said he hopes Iran will produce 1,000 nuclear bombs, adding that Israel is “truly terrified” of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Although he did not explicitly call for Iran to use a nuclear bomb against Israel, Salah al-Zawawi told the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese television station Al-Manar in an interview on February 20 that “if Iran produces a nuclear bomb — and I pray to Allah that Iran will produce 1,000 nuclear bombs,” he hopes “it will be used to defend, at the very least, the Islamic Republic and its principles,” according to a translation by watchdog group MEMRI.

Iran has denied seeking to produce nuclear weapons and signed a 2015 agreement with world powers that puts in place limitations on its nuclear program. At the same time, the Islamic Republic has continued to develop missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads and a number of senior Iranian officials have called repeatedly for Israel’s “annihilation,” including its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

During the interview, Zawawi also said Israel is part of a “Western enterprise” whose “goal is to establish the Greater Israel, which would control disintegrated Arab and Islamic countries.”

“This way, our enemy, along with its defenders and masters, would complete their plan to turn us into servants, if not slaves, in this region, and to plunder our resources,” he said, adding that “this is happening today in our Islamic world.”

In a 2014 interview, Zawawi called for Iran to support the Palestinians in order to help bring about “Israel’s annihilation,” maintaining Israel is a “fake regime” created by the “US and Western countries.”