Any move to negotiate with Israel would be an "unforgivable mistake," Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday, days after Saudi Arabia's crown prince said Israelis were entitled to live peacefully on their own land.
Saudi Arabia – the birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest shrines – does not officially recognize Israel. But Mohammed's comments, quoted in the U.S. magazine The Atlantic, are a further sign of an apparent thawing in bilateral ties.
Khamenei's remarks come amid a regional power struggle between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran. The two back opposing sides in the conflicts in Yemen and Syria as well as rival political groups in Iraq and Lebanon.
"Movement toward negotiation with the cheating, lying and oppressive regime [of Israel] is a big, unforgivable mistake that will push back the victory of the people of Palestine," Khamenei said in a statement posted on his official website.
The statement, which did not explicitly name Saudi Arabia, said it was the duty of all Muslims to support Palestinian resistance movements and pledged continued Iranian backing for the terrorist group Hamas.
After the crown prince's comments, his father, King Salman, reiterated Saudi Arabia's support for a Palestinian state.
Riyadh has long maintained that normalizing ties with Israel hinges on an Israeli withdrawal from lands captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War – territory Palestinians seek for a future state.
However, Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel last month, which an Israeli official hailed as a historic shift that followed two years of work.
In November, Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz disclosed covert contacts with Saudi Arabia, a rare acknowledgment of long-rumored secret dealings, which Riyadh still denies.
Khamenei issued Wednesday's statement in reply to a letter he recently received from Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which criticized the support of Arab governments for the United States.
In his statement, Khamenei called on the people of Muslim countries to defeat Israel.
"With an intense and planned struggle, they should force the enemy to retreat toward the point of demise," he said.
