Israel will disappear from global landscape, says Khamenei

Israel will eventually "disappear from the geographical landscape," Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday, adding that he hoped a Palestinian state would rise in its place.

Khamenei's comments came ahead of Friday's "Quds Day," traditionally held on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to show solidarity with the Palestinians and protest Israel's control of Jerusalem.

"With God's help, this year as well the Iranian nation will punch the faces of the enemies of Islam on Quds Day," Khamenei was quoted by the Mehr news agency as saying during a meeting with veterans of the Iran-Iraq War.

The Ayatollah added, "The light of hope will shine on the Palestinian issue, and this Islamic land will certainly be returned to the Palestinian nation, and the superfluous and fake Zionist [regime] will disappear from the landscape." He also accused the "Zionists and their supporters" of trying to cause the world to forget the Palestinian issue.

"The Palestinian issue is not a tactical issue for us, but an [important] Islamic principle," Khamenei added. "We want to save this Islamic state from the oppressive Zionist fingernails."

Also Wednesday, Gholam Reza Jalali, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards and current head of Iran's Civil Defense Organization, said that Quds Day "is an expression of the fact that there is no other way but to stand firm and resist until Israel is destroyed."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Egyptian President Mahmoud Morsi, meanwhile, met Wednesday for the first time. The two, who were in Saudi Arabia for a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, embraced each other warmly and even kissed, despite that there have not been high-level relations between Cairo and Tehran for more than 30 years.

Families sue Israel for scientists' deaths

Families of Iran's slain nuclear scientists have filed a lawsuit against Israel, the U.S. and Britain accusing them of involvement in their assassinations.

Rahim Ahmadi Roshan, father of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the slain chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, told a press conference in Tehran Wednesday that the families have demanded that Iran's judiciary pursue their complaint through international bodies and bring those behind the killings to justice.

"We've filed an indictment against the Zionist regime and the arrogant powers," Roshan told reporters."[The judiciary] is to pursue this case with the relevant international bodies."

Iran's state television broadcast purported confessions earlier this month by 14 suspects in connection with the killing of five nuclear scientists since 2010. The suspects also acknowledged in their purported confessions that they received training in Israel.

Iran has blamed Israel's Mossad as well as the CIA and Britain's MI6 for the assassinations, with support from some of Iran's neighbors. The U.S. and Britain have denied involvement in the slayings. Israel has not commented.

"Through this complaint, we declare to the world that actions of arrogant governments, led by the U.S., Britain and the occupying Zionist regime, in assassinating nuclear scientists and elites is against human principles," according to a statement read out by Mansoureh Karami, wife of slain Tehran University physics professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi.

"While filing our complaint and announcing our protest, we resolutely declare that not only will such disgraceful acts not prevent the advancement of the children of this land in science, it will cause them to take more effective steps with greater determination," she said.

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