Italy yesterday joined the US, France, Germany and Britain in condemning a speech by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth, writes diplomatic editor Ewen MacAskill. The Foreign Office summoned the Iranian charge d'affaires in London to make a formal protest.
The destruction of Israel has been Iranian policy since the revolution in 1979. So why a diplomatic spat now?
One reason is that the US and Britain, along with France and Germany, are pressing to prevent Iran securing a nuclear weapons capability. Iran repeatedly denies it is trying to secure such a capability, but remarks such as yesterday's play into the west's hands. In western capitals yesterday, the mood was: "Look what we have to deal with."
One western diplomat questioned how else Iran intended wiping Israel off the face of the earth other than by the use of nuclear weapons, even though Mr Ahmadinejad predicted in his speech that a new wave of Palestinian attacks would be sufficient. The message from the west was that Iran could not be trusted with a nuclear weapon.
The issue of Iran's nuclear programme, which it claims is purely for civilian purposes, is due to come up again next month at the next meeting of the Interational Atomic Energy Agency, the UN anti-proliferation organisation. The US and Britain are pushing for Iran to be referred, and Mr Ahmadinejad's comments do not help Iran's case.
Mr Ahmadinejad, who became president this summer, is seen in western capitals as naive. His predecessor, Muhammed Khatami, was generally careful to avoid such inflammatory language, whatever he thought in private.
The speech was also out of kilter with what is happening elsewhere in the Middle East. Whereas such denunciations of Israel and calls for its destruction were once commonplace, many Arab and Muslim countries have changed. Israel has improved ties with a range of countries, from the Gulf states to North Africa, and, more recently, Pakistan. Once regarded as beyond the pale in the Middle East, a string of delegations from formerly hostile countries paraded in to meet the Israeli delegation at a UN summit in New York last month.
Mr Ahmadinejad's comments may have gone down well with his student audience in Tehran but there is no tolerance for such views in most of the rest of the world.
