Posted 7/23/2006 10:49 AM ET TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's president declared Sunday that Israel had "pushed the button of its own destruction" by launching a military campaign against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not elaborate, but he suggested Islamic nations and others could somehow isolate Israel and its main backers, led by the United States. On Saturday, the chairman of Iran's armed forced joint chiefs, Maj. Gen. Sayyed Hassan Firuzabadi, said the Islamic republic would never join the current Middle East fighting.

"Israel pushed the button of its own destruction by attacking Lebanon," Ahmadinejad told a gathering of education officials.

Ahmadinejad's latest salvo against Israel came as the 12-day-old hostilities in Lebanon continued. The hard-line president drew international condemnation last year after publicly calling for Israel to be wiped out and calling the Holocaust a "myth."

Iran helped create the anti-Israel Hezbollah movement in the early 1980s and is among its main supplier of arms and funds. But Tehran has denied Israeli claims it sent Hezbollah long-range missiles that have reached northern Israel in the nearly two weeks of fighting since Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

"Britain and the United States are accomplices of the Zionist regime in its crimes in Lebanon and Palestine," Ahmadinejad said.

He said "the people of the region will respond" unless Israel and its allies apologize for their policies.

"Arrogant powers have set up a base for themselves to threaten and plunder nations in the region," Ahmadinejad said. "But today, the occupier regime (Israel) — whose philosophy is based on threats, massacre and invasion — has reached its finishing line."

Last week, Ahmadinejad sent a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel containing statements about Israel and the Holocaust that German officials said were "not acceptable." Germany has sharply criticized Ahmadinejad's previous anti-Israel statements.

In Tehran, the government has sanctioned billboards showing Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and a message that it is the duty of Muslims to "wipe out" Israel. Officials also organized a demonstration in the southern city of Shiraz by Iran's small Jewish community calling for Israel's destruction and praising Hezbollah.

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