What the Iranian president didn't say

The acknowledgment by the Israeli Deputy PM that the Iranian president did not say that he wanted to wipe Israel off the map, should give all those braying for an attack on Iran pause for thought. CommonDreams reports citing an interview on Al Jazeera

"Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor admitted that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said Iran wanted to "wipe Israel off the face of the map" in an interview with Al Jazeera last week.

Al Jazeera's Nabili writes about the interview: "It's when I challenged him on the biggest talking point of all, Iran's supposed determination to 'wipe Israel off the face of the map,' that Meridor seemed to stumble outside the lines of the agreed narrative."

Meridor: [Iran's leaders] all come basically ideologically, religiously with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn't say 'we'll wipe it out', you are right, but [that] it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor, it should be removed;

Nabili: Well, I am glad you acknowledged they didn't say they will wipe it out, because certainly Israeli politicians…

Meridor: … they say it will be removed, needs to be removed …

Juan Cole explained on his Informed Comment blog that Ahmadinejad's quote "comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all." He writes that "it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that 'the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.' It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks."

The widely repeated mistranslated quote is from a speech given by Ahmadinejad in 2005, often used by politicians and corporate media."

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