The Threat from Iran Is to Israel:
Bush Spins His Iran Attack Plans
by Gary Leupp
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 10, 2006
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I read again in this morning’s Boston Globe a matter of fact reference to Iran’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map.” This echoes the repeated allegation by President Bush and other top administration officials that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has issued such a call. “We are talking about a specific threat on a partner of the U.S. and Germany,” Bush told the German newspaper Bild last week. But is this not just more neocon disinformation, designed to inspire fear that Iran’s nuclear program, which heads the long list of Washington’s charges against Iran, is really designed to annihilate Israel?
It turns out that Ahmadinejad never said what is being routinely attributed to him. Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at University of Michigan who reads Persian, explains that he actually stated (quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini): “The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).”
Now, some might say, “So he didn’t say, ‘wipe off the map,’ he said ‘erase from the page.’ What’s the difference? Anyway he’s saying he wants to get rid of Israel.” But Cole explains why the mistranslation significantly distorts the Iranian leader’s words. “Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope -- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah’s government. Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that ‘Israel must be wiped off the map’ with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.”
How would it sound if Bush kept repeating: “The Iranian president has quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, who died seventeen years ago, as saying ‘the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time’”? Pretty lame huh. Or if he were to say, “In ten years, Iran might be able to build a nuclear weapon to use against Israel, which itself has had a couple hundred nukes for quite awhile?” Pretty lame too. You can be sure that employees in the current incarnation of the Office of Special Plans aren’t being paid to churn out that kind of stuff. They’re paid to produce effective propaganda to justify the planned attack on Iran.
“This is how we’ll spin it,” some wise neocon must have suggested as soon as the Iranian leader made his statement. “We’ll say Ahmadinejad has stated publicly that he wants to wi
Bush Spins His Iran Attack Plans
by Gary Leupp
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 10, 2006
Send this page to a friend! (click here)
I read again in this morning’s Boston Globe a matter of fact reference to Iran’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map.” This echoes the repeated allegation by President Bush and other top administration officials that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has issued such a call. “We are talking about a specific threat on a partner of the U.S. and Germany,” Bush told the German newspaper Bild last week. But is this not just more neocon disinformation, designed to inspire fear that Iran’s nuclear program, which heads the long list of Washington’s charges against Iran, is really designed to annihilate Israel?
It turns out that Ahmadinejad never said what is being routinely attributed to him. Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at University of Michigan who reads Persian, explains that he actually stated (quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini): “The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).”
Now, some might say, “So he didn’t say, ‘wipe off the map,’ he said ‘erase from the page.’ What’s the difference? Anyway he’s saying he wants to get rid of Israel.” But Cole explains why the mistranslation significantly distorts the Iranian leader’s words. “Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope -- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah’s government. Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that ‘Israel must be wiped off the map’ with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.”
How would it sound if Bush kept repeating: “The Iranian president has quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, who died seventeen years ago, as saying ‘the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time’”? Pretty lame huh. Or if he were to say, “In ten years, Iran might be able to build a nuclear weapon to use against Israel, which itself has had a couple hundred nukes for quite awhile?” Pretty lame too. You can be sure that employees in the current incarnation of the Office of Special Plans aren’t being paid to churn out that kind of stuff. They’re paid to produce effective propaganda to justify the planned attack on Iran.
“This is how we’ll spin it,” some wise neocon must have suggested as soon as the Iranian leader made his statement. “We’ll say Ahmadinejad has stated publicly that he wants to wi
