"The wish of the entire Iranian nation."

Ah, the sweet words of Mohammed Khatami, ex-President of Iran - and we considered him a moderate!

Iran’s former President Mohammad Khatami, a mid-ranking cleric dubbed a “moderate” by the West, defended the hard-line stance of his successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against the state of Israel, a semi-official daily wrote in a front-page headline on Saturday.

The daily Kayhan, which carries the official positions of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that while defending Ahmadinejad’s threat that Israel “must be wiped off the map”, Khatami announced, “Ahmadinejad’s stance was the wish of the entire Iranian nation”.

“Iran’s policies have not changed at all with the instalment of the new government”, Khatami was quoted as saying, while in Berlin.