 The statement itself was in fact a citation, with a minute verbal variation, of a remark made by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, which had created no furor at the time, but did so when Ahmadinejad quoted them in 2005.Dan Meridor, Israel's minister of intelligence and atomic energy said during an Al Jazeera interview that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had repeatedly said "that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive.They didn't say, 'We'll wipe it out,' you're right, but, 'It will not survive.'"