Iran’s president announced on Sunday that the countdown button toward Israel’s destruction has been pushed.

“God willing, in the near future we will witness the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying to a number of foreign guests at ceremonies marking the 18th anniversary of the death of the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Citing last year’s Lebanon war, he said, “With God’s help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine.”

In a separate speech the same day, Ahmadinejad directed this comment at the State of Israel: “If you make a mistake and create another war against the oppressed Lebanese nation, this time the angry ocean of the nations of the region will remove your rotten … roots from the region.”

As with Ahmadinejad’s infamous speech of 2005 when he said Israel should be “wiped off the map,” many nations have condemned these latest statements. Still, if history is any indication, the Iranian leader’s provocations Sunday will do nothing to change the trend among Western nations, including the United States, of ignoring Iranian support for terrorism against Israel, and even looking to Iran for help in stabilizing what is currently the biggest hotspot in the region, Iraq.