Peres: Iran president an 'evil, horrible' person who 'lies about the Holocaust'

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one of the "one of the most evil and horrible people of modern history," and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be present when he addresses the United Nations today, President Shimon Peres said yesterday.

Ahmadinejad, Peres told students at an agricultural college in northern Israel, "lies though his teeth about the existence of the Holocaust and curses Israel," and "is pessimistic and has no future."

The president's verbal attack on Ahmadinejad comes a few days after the Iranian leader called the Holocaust "a false claim, a fairy tale, used as a pretext for crimes against humanity."

Although Russian President Dimitry Medvedev told CNN last week that Peres had told him Israel does not intend any strike against Iran, IDF Gabi Ashkenazi said Monday that all options regarding Iran were still on the table.

"We all understand that the best way of coping is through international sanctions ... I hope that Iran will understand this. I think that if not, Israel has the right to defend itself, and all options are open," Lieutenant General Ashkenazi said. "The IDF's working premise is that we have to be prepared for that possibility, and that is exactly what we are doing," he added.

Ahmadinejad's spokesman, Mohammad-Jafar Mohammadzadeh, was defiant, telling the official Iranian news agency IRNA Monday that "the Zionist lobby would do anything to prevent our president from disclosing the Iranian standpoint and distort the message of global justice, but the Zionists will once again fail."

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Watan yesterday slammed Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial as an effort to "take the spotlight" off domestic turmoil in Iran.