Those who have been agitating for attacking Iran have been repeatedly making the claim, faithfully repeated by the compliant media, that Iranian president Ahmadinejad said that he wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the map and that this proved that he was a crazy man and that if Iran ever obtained a nuclear weapon, he would use it against Israel.
The repeated objections of informed commentators that this was a mistranslation of his remarks were studiously ignored, as were the objections that such an action would make no sense for Iran to carry out and ignored the realities of how power was distributed in Iran and who made what kinds of decisions.
Now Democracy Now! has a clip of an interview in which Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor admits that what the Israeli and US propaganda machine has been trumpeting for years as the reason to attack Iran was a lie all along, and that Ahmadinejad did not say what has been attributed to him. See a fuller report of the interview here.
It will be interesting to see if this admission gets as wide a play in the US as the original story. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
The only country that I’ve seen to be wiped off the map in modern times is Cuba (for some reason edited out of the Caribbean on a chart included in the flight magazine of a major US airline).
Though of course in the ’50s and much of the ’60s, the US State Department did try to pretend that mainland China did not exist. Ah, good times!
I wouldn’t hold my breath, either. There’s always another reason, just like the series of reasons we got for invading Iraq, none of them valid.
Ah gee, Meridor says that Ahmadinejad said that Israel is a cancerous tumor that must be removed from the Middle East. Sounds to me like the difference between Israel should be wiped out and Israel is a cancerous tumor that should be remove from the Middle East is a distinction without a difference. But what the bleep do I know.
Nuclear weapons in the hands of a person whose mode of thought is influenced by religion—any religion (Islam, Judaism, Christinity, Scientology, Pastafarianism,…) in any country (the U.S., Iran, Israel, Wales, Tuvalu…)—are a major concern.
The combination of irrational thinking and massive destructive power is never a good thing.
The lie is repeated because it is a useful lie and readily believed by those who want it to be true. The facts don’t matter when you have an immoral agenda.
Those who are informed and honest about Iran have been saying this for years. In his UN speech Ahmadinejad equated Israel to the USSR when he said “wiped from the page of time”. Unless someone is wilfully ignorant and dishonest, it’s not a call for genocide, it’s a call for the end of a corrupt and murderous regime. The USSR was not nuked out of existence, and nor will Israel be.
The informed and honest also know that Iran is not trying to build nuclear weapons, something the CIA has admitted. Iran want energy independence from oil. Iran doesn’t just export oil, it imports it.
So why doesn’t Iran process its own oil? Because western nations don’t want it to have the ability. When Mossadegh tried to sell oil at world prices in 1953 and acquire refinery equipment, his government was overthrown by the US and UK governments.
The puppet government of the Shah willingly sold oil at below market prices to the west, giving away his country’s wealth for his own selfish benefit. After the revolution in 1979, Iran was blocked again from acquiring refinery equipment.
I would contend Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are examples of countries that have been wiped off the map, but I guess I just have a different criteria than you do.
The interesting thing is that few know that Ahmadinejad doesn’t control foreign policy in Iran; the Supreme Leader (a Mullah) does. They have a split executive branch.
This is another example of US and western hypocrisy and lying about Iran.
The Iranian president before Ahmadinejad was Mahmoud Khatami. He was a moderate who wanted to negotiate with the west, but everyone refused.
The US labelled Khatami a “powerless figurehead”.
After the election, Ahmadinejad was labelled a “radical who would nuke Israel”.
The two held the same job, but only one “had his finger on the button”?
No. It doesn’t work like that. But why let the facts get in the way of a useful lie?
Why don’t you read that link? Oh wait, reading in English is for right-wingers as difficult as it is in Dutch. Ahmadenijad en Khomeini said that Israel is an unnatural phenomenon and thus will not survive, they didn’t say they will make Israel disappear.
No. But according to that line of thinking you should take their fatwah’s seriously too.
http://www.ww4report.com/node/929
So no reason to attack.
Excuse me, Prof. Singham cited Dan Meridor as some sort of expert on Iran who, he claims, admitted that Ahmadinejad didn’t threatened to eliminate Israel from the earth. If one listens to the interview, Meridor claims that Ahmadinejad did say that Israel was a cancer that had to be removed from the Middle East. Now how does Mr. Mnbo think that the Government of Iran is going to accomplish that feat? I am only quoting Prof. Singham’s hero, Dan Meridor.
Mr. leftover1under (aka Don Williams) repeats the crap that he used to post over at Matt Yglesias’ blog.
In his UN speech Ahmadinejad equated Israel to the USSR when he said “wiped from the page of time”. Unless someone is wilfully ignorant and dishonest, it’s not a call for genocide, it’s a call for the end of a corrupt and murderous regime.
Considering the actions of the Government of Iran and it’s puppet in Syria, the Government of Israel is a bunch of wimps. If they behaved like the Governments of Iran and Syria and applied Hama Rules to the Gaza Strip, then Mr. Williams would really have something to whine about.
I’d pick the big one and go with the USSR then.
So an obnoxious blowhard saying that Israel should be eliminated as a nation (with no chance of turning this into a serious threat) is grounds for war. What about an obnoxious blowhard calling for nuclear strikes on civilians because those civilians live in a country where obnoxious blowhards are in government?
Nobody reads your propaganda except those who aren’t familiar with you.
I didn’t read it. I skipped to the “Reply” button.
Eh. Still wouldn’t trust ’em with nukes. Hell, I don’t trust US (the U.S.) with nukes!