TEHRAN, 5 November 2005 — Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed yesterday that Iran would not attack any country despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent call for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.

“We will not commit aggression toward any nation; we will not breach any nation’s rights anywhere in the world,” said Khamenei in a sermon broadcast live on state media on Eid Al-Fitr. “But if the power seekers of the world — out of habit — want to infringe our nation’s rights, it will not tolerate oppression by anyone or any powers,” he said during the prayers attended by top officials and thousands of the faithful.

Eid Al-Fitr falls on the 26th anniversary of the 1979 US Embassy takeover in Tehran, which Khamenei went on to sanction as the “symbol of Iranian nation’s oppression”.

The compound, dubbed the “Den of Spies” was seized after the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled the Washington-backed shah.

“The documents found in the Den of Spies ... reveal the American government had not missed a chance, especially after the Islamic revolution, against the Iranian nation and its interests,” said the powerful leader.

Meanwhile, the United States called for the immediate release from detention of Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji, warning that his health is at risk.

“The United States calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Akbar Ganji as well as his immediate access to medical assistance and legal representation,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday in a statement.

“Over the past week, the United States has received reports that jailed Iranian activist Akbar Ganji’s health is at serious risk,” he said, adding that Ganji’s wife on Monday claimed her husband was being tortured, kept in isolation and denied medical care.

“Mr. Ganji has spent more than five years in prison due to his peaceful advocacy for free speech and democracy. His imprisonment and any inhumane treatment are serious violations of fundamental human rights,” McCormack said.

“The United States calls on the international community to continue to press for the release of all political prisoners in Iran,” the spokesman added. Ganji, Iran’s most prominent political prisoner, was sent back to jail from hospital on Sept. 3 after agreeing to end a hunger strike that lasted close to two months.

The 46-year-old journalist was sentenced to six years prison in 2001 after he wrote articles implicating several regime officials in a string of gruesome murders of opposition intellectuals and writers — crimes that shocked the country. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in August wrote to Iran’s new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to ask for Ganji’s release “on humanitarian grounds”.

In Rome, at least 10,000 Italians, most waving Israeli flags, demonstrated peacefully outside Iran’s Embassy in Rome late Thursday to protest Ahmadinejad’s recent call for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.

Dozens of parliamentary deputies and senators from government and opposition parties participated in the torchlight protest along with Jewish groups, but Italy’s foreign and defense ministers belatedly pulled out over fears their presence would further escalate a diplomatic rift with Tehran.

Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said in a televised statement he was withdrawing because his presence could have provoked “damaging consequences” for Italy and for Italians.