The news agency your newspaper sources its Iran Vs United States (via Israel) from determines what version of comments made by Iranian president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, you end up reading.
Does Ahmadinejad want to "wipe Israel off the map" or is he more interested in Zionist regime change?
It's an important question because war drums are being beaten by the Bush White House, and their NeoCon propagandists, and the "Bomb them now!" chanting will only get louder as President Bush enters the last few months of his soft dictatorship.
Pepe Escobar, of the Asia Times, picks through the mistranslations :
According to Agence France Presse (AFP), quoting the Fars news agency, Ahmadinejad....,said, "They [Israel] must know that the nations of the region hate this counterfeit regime. And if there is the slightest chance, they will uproot this counterfeit regime."And what has been the end result of all the attempts by BushCo. to isolate the Iranians over their nuclear energy programs and anti-Israel baiting?
Reuters had a much more bellicose take. According to its translation, "They [Israel] should know that regional nations hate this fake and criminal regime and if the smallest and briefest chance is given to regional nations they will destroy it."
The Associated Press's (AP) version of the quote is even more apocalyptic. It reads: "The criminals assume that by holding celebrations ... they can save the sinister Zionist regime from death and destruction." The AP copy notes, "Ahmadinejad used an Arabic word, ismihlal, than can also be translated as destruction, death and collapse." An Arabic expert contacted by Asia Times Online said ismihlal means basically "to break down in smaller parts". That's not exactly nuclear annihilation.
We are back to the situation of Ahmadinejad's 2005 alleged threat to "wipe Israel off the map". What he actually said then, quoting his personal icon, the leader of the Islamic revolution in 1979, ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was that the "regime occupying Jerusalem should vanish from the pages of time". Yes, this means regime change - as much as the Bush administration always wanted regime change in Tehran. It does not mean a call for a nuclear holocaust.
What AFP translates as "the Zionist regime is on the verge of dying ... throwing a birthday party for this regime is like having a birthday party for a dead person", Reuters prefers to package as "the Zionist regime is dying. The criminals imagine that by holding celebrations ... they can save the Zionist regime from death".
But in this case it was up to APTN, the video arm of AP, to provide the meatier translation: "The criminals wrongly suppose that by holding celebrations, coming to the occupied lands of Palestine and supporting these criminals, they can save the resented Zionist regime from death, annihilation and from the claws of Palestinian fighters."
And here's what President Bush has cherry-picked from the fantastical incorrect quotes from Ahmadinejad to make his case for War On Iran :
"...the message to Iran is that your desire to have a nuclear weapon, coupled with your statements about the destruction of our close ally, have made it abundantly clear to everybody that we have got to work together to stop you from having a nuclear weapon. To me the single-biggest threat to peace in the Middle East is the Iranian regime."
BushCo. and the bumbling NeoCons couldn't have fucked it up more if they tried."You end up realizing there is a strategy being worked out between Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, and they have actually managed to make quite strong headway in the last few days," Abdulhamid told AFP.
The Bush administration's campaign to isolate Iran and Syria has backfired as the two Middle East hardliners ended up this week sidelining the United States, analysts said.
Supported by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah bolstered recent military gains in a deal with Lebanon's pro-western government while Syria emerged from the shadows with the announcement of indirect talks with Israel, they contend.
For Brookings Institution analyst Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian scholar and dissident, both events flow from a broader plan orchestrated by "puppet master" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.
"The Iranians are running the show right now," he added.
