Iranian President Hassan Rouhani attacked Israel during an address Wednesday, comparing the Jewish state to the Islamic State as two “tumors derived from the same origin.”

“Today, this festering Zionist tumor has opened once again and has turned the land of olives into destruction and blood and littered the land with the body parts of Palestinian children,” Mr. Rouhani said in an Eid al Fetr address to a gathering of senior Iranian officials and foreign diplomats, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Mr. Rouhani, who succeeded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year, was cheered by the West as a moderate voice who could move Iran to being a more secular nation.

The Iranian president also compared Israel to the Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, by calling it “a second festering tumor that murders people in the name of Islam.”

“Analysts say that both of these tumors derived from the same origin,” he added.

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