Iran’s former foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi stressed that Tehran will “never” recognize Israel “even if a Palestinian state is established.”

“As long as the [Israeli] entity exists and is active in our region, the crisis will remain between Iran and the regime that is occupying Jerusalem, even if a Palestinian state is established. I am referring to the proposed two-state solution,” Salehi said in an interview with Russia Today.

The Iran-Israel conflict will end only when the latter “ceases to exist,” he pointed out, further noting that “the form and means of this confrontation may change, according to the circumstances of time and place.”

The two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict envisions an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel, west of the Jordan River.

The boundary between the two states is still subject to dispute and negotiation, with Palestinian and Arab leadership demanding full Israeli withdrawal from territories it occupied in 1967, which is rejected by Israel.

In 2015, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Israel must be destroyed in 25 years and the government even set up a countdown clock in Tehran and a few other cities. Many Iranians mock the anti-Israel rhetoric and the ticking clock, but the regime is adamant in pursuing the goal.

Regime authorities use every opportunity to stress the necessity of “Israel's destruction,” a slogan that has justified Iran’s huge financial and military support to militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, while Iranians increasingly face poverty and a bleak economic future.