Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)

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“Israel can never feel that it is in a safe place,” Rouhani declared. 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened Israel and stated that it can never feel safe, while calling for all Palestinians to “return to their homeland.”

“Israel can never feel that it is in a safe place,” Rouhani told reporters last week.

He made the remarks as Iranians across the Islamic Republic marked Quds Day and marched while condemning Israel and calling “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”

Iran does not recognize Israel and has marked al-Quds Day since the start of its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Anti-Zionist demonstrations are held on the last Friday of the Muslim month of Ramadan.

“Today, nations declare that freedom of Quds and the entire Palestinian territories is the cause and wish of all of us and they will never forget this cause,” Rouhani asserted. Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.

Radio Zamaneh, an Amsterdam-based Persian-language station, reported that Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, went out in the street with his bodyguards to march with the demonstrators for a few minutes. However, he was ambushed by some who cursed him, accusing him of selling out his homeland and telling him that he deserved to die.

In last year’s rally in Tehran, Iran unveiled a digital clock in the city’s Palestine Square counting down the days to what it says will be the destruction of Israel in 2040.

The time frame appears to stem from comments made in 2015 by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who vowed there will be “nothing” left of Israel by the year 2040, the UK’s Independent reported.

In September 2015, Khamenei proclaimed, “You [Israelis] will not see the coming 25 years and, God willing, there will not be something named the Zionist regime in next 25 years.”

He later tweeted in broken English that Israel “will not see next 25 years; God willing, there will be nothing as Zionist regime by next 25 years. Secondly, until then, struggling, heroic and jihadi morale will leave no moment of serenity for Zionists.”

Khamenei calls for Israel’s destruction almost on a weekly basis.