Ynet (quoting an Iranian cleric): "'Ahmadinejad wants friendship with Israel'"

Mesha'ei's statement, if it is the well-known one that got him in significant hot water, did not exactly call for "friendly ties" "with the Jewish State." Ynet should stress more that the cleric's claim is just an attempt to hurt Ahmadinejad. That seems obvious to me, at any rate:

Unprecedented accusation against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: a Muslim cleric accused the Iranian president of wanting "friendship with Israel," an Iranian website associated with the opposition reported on Thursday.

According to religious scholar Mahmoud Nubian, Ahmadinejad's top adviser Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei stated three years ago that Iran should have "friendly ties" with the Jewish State, but Ahmadinejad has refrained from reiterating this position in public because of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's fierce objection.

Nubian further claimed that the Iranian president personally told him that he supported Mashaei's statement, but couldn’t say anything out of respect to the leader. [...]

He said publicly that there was nothing non-Khomeinisticly correct about the statement. In a related development . . .