Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an annual anti-Israel protest in Tehran on Friday that the Jewish state was a "cancerous tumor" that will soon be excised, drawing Western rebukes.

Washington said Ahmadinejad's statements were "reprehensible", while Paris viewed them as "outrageous."

A month after the suicide bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria, investigators have made no major breakthroughs but progress has been encouraging, the country's interior minister told Agence France Presse Friday.

"It is only expected that it will take time, sometimes years, to uncover the whole mechanism behind the attack. But we are encouraged by the work we accomplished in the last 30 days," Tsvetan Tsvetanov said in an interview.

Israel is a "cancerous tumor" that will soon be finished off, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday told demonstrators holding an annual protest against the existence of the Jewish state.

"The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumor. Even if one cell of them is left in one inch of (Palestinian) land, in the future this story (of Israel's existence) will repeat," he said in a speech in Tehran marking Iran's Quds Day that was broadcast on state television.

Israel is an artificial "outgrowth" in the Middle East that "will disappear," Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said ahead of rallies on Friday against the Jewish state and supporting the Palestinians.

The annual Quds Day marches were started in 1979 after the founding of the Islamic republic. The protests use the word Quds, derived from Arabic, to designate the city of Jerusalem.

Israel on Thursday wound up nationwide testing of an SMS warning system against missile attack, sending texts to mobile phones in Jerusalem and other parts of the country, a military spokeswoman said.

The five-day exercise, which began on Sunday, took place to the backdrop of mounting speculation over a possible Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities and a resulting Iranian counter-attack.

Thousands of Hizbullah members and supporters operate with few restrictions in Europe, raising money that is funnelled to the group’s leadership in Lebanon, the New York Times reported.

While the U.S. and Israel consider Hizbullah an Iranian-backed terrorist organization with bloody hands, the European Union continues to treat it foremost as a Lebanese political and social movement, it said.

Israel is prepared for a 30-day war on multiple fronts should it decide to strike Iran, and is "ready as never before" for such a clash, the outgoing home front defense minister said Wednesday.

In an interview with the Maariv newspaper, Matan Vilnai said Israel was ready to face the consequences of a clash with Iran that could be sparked if the Jewish state decides to launch a strike against Tehran's nuclear program.

Israel's foreign ministry on Wednesday condemned a decision by the EU to effectively label parts of an Israeli town as a settlement in a new list of locales not entitled to European tariff exemptions.

"For anyone who deals in reality, there is not the slightest doubt that the Modiin, Maccabim and Reut localities are an integral part of Israel, and their future is not in question," the ministry said in a statement.

Israel has not yet decided whether to strike Iran over its suspect nuclear program, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday, as Tehran dismissed the threat of an imminent attack.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in recent days had stiffened their rhetoric on Iran, suggesting they were thinking more seriously of military action against Tehran's nuclear facilities.

Israel's prime minister on Tuesday named former internal security minister Avi Dichter as new home front defense minister, amid growing speculation about a potential Israeli attack on Iran.

"Today, I decided to appoint Knesset member Avi Dichter to serve as the minister for home front defense," Netanyahu said at a ceremony welcoming new immigrants to Israel.