[Peace-discuss] What Iran's Leader Said

[David Green]

Below is an article from today's Znet, followed by a
letter I wrote to the NY Times on Oct. 30th of last
year:

"Again it is four short words, though the distortion
is worse than in the Khrushchev case. The remarks are
not out of context. They are wrong, pure and simple.
Ahmadinejad never said them. Farsi speakers have
pointed out that he was mistranslated. The Iranian
president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran's
first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini,
that "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from
the page of time" just as the Shah's regime in Iran
had vanished."

ZNet | Iran
 
If Iran Is Ready To Talk, The Us Must Do So
Unconditionally

It is absurd to demand that Tehran should have made
concessions before sitting down with the Americans
 
by Jonathan Steele; The Guardian; June 04, 2006  

It is 50 years since the greatest misquotation of the
cold war. At a Kremlin reception for western
ambassadors in 1956, the Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev announced: "We will bury you." Those four
words were seized on by American hawks as proof of
aggressive Soviet intent.

Doves who pointed out that the full quotation gave a
less threatening message were drowned out. Khrushchev
had actually said: "Whether you like it or not,
history is on our side. We will bury you." It was a
harmless boast about socialism's eventual victory in
the ideological competition with capitalism. He was
not talking about war.

Now we face a similar propaganda distortion of remarks
by Iran's president. Ask anyone in Washington, London
or Tel Aviv if they can cite any phrase uttered by
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the chances are high they will
say he wants Israel "wiped off the map".

Again it is four short words, though the distortion is
worse than in the Khrushchev case. The remarks are not
out of context. They are wrong, pure and simple.
Ahmadinejad never said them. Farsi speakers have
pointed out that he was mistranslated. The Iranian
president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran's
first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini,
that "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from
the page of time" just as the Shah's regime in Iran
had vanished.

He was not making a military threat. He was calling
for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some
point in the future. The "page of time" phrase
suggests he did not expect it to happen soon. There
was no implication that either Khomeini, when he first
made the statement, or Ahmadinejad, in repeating it,
felt it was imminent, or that Iran would be involved
in bringing it about.

But the propaganda damage was done, and western hawks
bracket the Iranian president with Hitler as though he
wants to exterminate Jews. At the recent annual
convention of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, a powerful lobby group, huge screens
switched between pictures of Ahmadinejad making the
false "wiping off the map" statement and a ranting
Hitler.

Misquoting Ahmadinejad is worse than taking Khrushchev
out of context for a second reason. Although the
Soviet Union had a collective leadership, the pudgy
Russian was the undoubted No 1 figure, particularly on
foreign policy. The Iranian president is not.

His predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, was seen in the
west as a moderate reformer, and during his eight
years in office western politicians regularly lamented
the fact that he was not Iran's top decision-maker.
Ultimate power lay with the conservative unelected
supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet now that
Ahmadinejad is president, western hawks behave as
though he is in charge, when in fact nothing has
changed. Ahmadinejad is not the only important voice
in Tehran. Indeed Khamenei was quick to try to adjust
the misperceptions of Ahmadinejad's comments. A few
days after the president made them, Khamenei said Iran
"will not commit aggression against any nation".

The evidence suggests that a debate is going on in
Tehran over policy towards the west which is no less
fierce than the one in Washington. Since 2003 the
Iranians have made several overtures to the Bush
administration, some more explicit than others.
Ahmadinejad's recent letter to Bush was a veiled
invitation to dialogue. Iranians are also arguing over
policy towards Israel. Trita Parsi, an analyst at
Johns Hopkins University, says influential rivals to
Ahmadinejad support a "Malaysian" model whereby Iran,
like Islamic Malaysia, would not recognise Israel but
would not support Palestinian groups such as Hamas, if
relations with the US were better.

The obvious way to develop the debate is for the two
states to start talking to each other. Last winter the
Americans said they were willing, provided talks were
limited to Iraq. Then the hawks around Bush vetoed
even that narrow agenda. Their victory made nonsense
of the pressure the US is putting on other UN security
council members for tough action against Iran. Talk of
sanctions is clearly premature until Washington and
Tehran make an effort to negotiate. This week, in
advance of Condoleezza Rice's meeting in Vienna
yesterday with the foreign ministers of Britain,
France, Germany, China and Russia, the factions in
Washington hammered out a compromise. The US is ready
to talk to Tehran alongside the EU3 (Britain, France
and Germany), but only after Tehran has abandoned its
uranium-enrichment programme.

To say the EU3's dialogue with Tehran was sufficient,
as Washington did until this week, was the most
astonishing example of multilateralism in the Bush
presidency. A government that makes a practice of
ignoring allies and refuses to accept the jurisdiction
of bodies such as the International Criminal Court was
leaving all the talking to others on one of the
hottest issues of the day. Unless Bush is set on war,
this refusal to open a dialogue could not be taken
seriously.

The EU3's offer of carrots for Tehran was also
meaningless without a US role. Europe cannot give Iran
security guarantees. Tehran does not want
non-aggression pacts with Europe. It wants them with
the only state that is threatening it both with
military attack and foreign-funded programmes for
regime change.

The US compromise on talks with Iran is a step in the
right direction, though Rice's hasty statement was
poorly drafted, repeatedly calling Iran both a
"government" and a "regime". But it is absurd to
expect Iran to make concessions before sitting down
with the Americans. Dialogue is in the interests of
all parties. Europe's leaders, as well as Russia and
China, should come out clearly and tell the Americans
so.

Whatever Iran's nuclear ambitions, even US hawks admit
it will be years before it could acquire a bomb, let
alone the means to deliver it. This offers ample time
for negotiations and a "grand bargain" between Iran
and the US over Middle Eastern security. Flanked by
countries with US bases, Iran has legitimate concerns
about Washington's intentions.

Even without the US factor, instability in the Gulf
worries all Iranians, whether or not they like being
ruled by clerics. All-out civil war in Iraq, which
could lead to intervention by Turkey and Iraq's Arab
neighbours, would be a disaster for Iran. If the US
wants to withdraw from Iraq in any kind of order, this
too will require dialogue with Iran. If this is what
Blair told Bush last week, he did well. But he should
go all the way, and urge the Americans to talk without
conditions. 

j.steele at guardian.co.uk

_______________________


Letter to NY Times, Oct. 30, 2005 (unpublished)

     This is in reference to the article “’Destroy
Israel’,” (Week in Review, 10/30). The article states:
“In a speech in Teheran, Iran's new president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, said that Israel ‘must be wiped off the
map.’" According to the transcript linked to this
article, he said: “Our dear Imam said that the
occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this
was a very wise statement.” In 1941, Charles de Gaulle
might well have said that “the occupying regime needs
to be wiped off the map.”

     The title of the article was placed in single
quotes: ‘Destroy Israel.’ It is also important to note
that those two words do not appear in the transcript
linked to the article. Whatever one thinks of the
Iranian leader’s views and intentions, or of Israel’s
occupation of Palestine, it is important to begin with
an accurate rendering of what was said.



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