February 20, 2008 | 5:56 pm

Mullah’s offer to welcome Jews back to Iran is a joke!

Posted by Karmel Melamed

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Iran’s radical fundamentalist Islamic leaders never cease to make me laugh nowadays with their almost daily ridiculous news releases to the Western media concerning Jews and Israel. This is one of their latest asinine news releases put out by the Iranian government’s state-run media. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri would now like to “have the Jews return” back to Iran:

“The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes all Iranian Jews who have immigrated to the occupied Palestine,” he stressed. Speaking to reporters in Cairo he said the Islamic Republic of Iran supports all Palestinian and Lebanese factions, adding “Tehran’s support to Hezbollah Movement backs to its braveness in fighting against the Zionist regime.”

This offer to “welcome” the Jews back to Iran stinks as a yet another publicity stunt by the Iranian government to seek sympathy for the international community by claiming that they “love” Jews. If the regime supposedly would like to welcome Jews, then would they reimburse the 80,000 Iranian Jews who live outside of Iran the billions of dollars in assets the Iranian government confiscated from the Jews of Iran since 1979? If they want to welcome the Jews back to Iran, will Jews be given the same equal rights that Muslims have in that country? If they want to welcome the Jews back to Iran, will they apologize for wrongfully executing more than a dozen Iranian Jews since 1979 for supposedly being “Zionist spies”? If they want to welcome the Jews back to Iran, will the Iranian government finally release information about the 12 Jews who they arrested in the 1990’s and have not yet be heard from?

The answer to these and other questions is a very obvious NO. This is because this regime in Iran would never truly welcome Jews back to that country and give them the same freedom Jews enjoy in the U.S. and other democratic free nations. Again and again the current Iranian government has proven that it does not welcome Jews and will never welcome them because of their unfair laws and anti-Semitic state of mind. Jews and other religious minorities may have a “representative” in the government, but this is merely for show as the majority of Iranian laws treat all religious minorities as second class citizens. Likewise we can’t forget the daily calls from the Iranian government for the annihilation of the State of Israel. It is simply ridiculous and hypocritical to say you welcome Jews to your country on the one hand but on the other hand you want to eliminate the Jewish State from the face of the earth!

So to Nateq-Nouri, I say no thanks…we Iranian Jews have had enough of your government’s B.S. and terror toward our brethren in Iran and in Israel. We do not want to return to that country while jackasses like yourself are in power. We do not want to return to a country whose leadership has terrorized Jews, Muslims, Christians and others who do not follow your radical form of Islam. We do not want to return to a country whose leaders constantly call for the destruction of another country. We do not want to return to a country where we will be forced to live in constant fear for our lives and be treated as second class citizens because of our religion. We do not want to live in a country where we have to be ashame of loving Israel and being proud of America.

For those unfamiliar with Nateq-Nouri, he was the former hardliner speaker of the Iranian “Majles” or parliament and ran in the 1997 Iranian presidential elections against Mohammad Khatami. He became involved in politics in 1963 as an anti-Shah activist while studying under the radical Islamic Ayatollah Montazeri in the Iranian city of Qom. After being arrested numerous times by the late-Shah’s regime, he eventually fled the country for Lebanon and Syria. But Nateq-Nouri, quickly rose to prominence in Iran following the 1979 revolution and was Minister of Interior from 1981 to 1985.

One last thought to leave you with…why is the Iranian government so interested in the plight of the Palestinian people and bad mouthing Israel, instead of helping the suffering people of Iran who are a Muslim majority? Iran is now facing double digit unemployment, high inflation, food and gas shortages, massive trade embargos, international pressure on their banking systems…and the list goes on. It’s amazing how the crazy mullahs in Iran do nothing about their own country’s problems but always use the Jews and Israel as a scapegoat for their domestic problems and shortcomings!