Advocates of bombing Iran or stretching the rules of the NPT way beyond what the rules actually say, only in the case of Iran have a favorite talking point. That point is that Iran has threatened to wipe other countries "off the map". or alternatively to wipe Israel off the map, or alternatively, the reason Israel should only be held to its actual legal obligations imaginary obligations should be applied to Iran is because Israel has not threatened to wipe Iran off the map.
In my last diary I discussed how Iran is not actually in violation of any legal obligations, even if it refuses to take the voluntary and non-binding steps the IAEA calls for Iran to take to "build confidence".
In this diary I will talk about how Ahmadinejad's statements during his world without Zionism speech have been exaggerated, certainly deliberately, into the fearsome quotations we hear so often now.
The best place to start would be the speech that started it all, Ahmadinejad's speech made during the "World without Zionism" conference in October 2005. The New York Times that Sunday published the full text of the speech
that you can read here.
The statement containing "wiped off the map" is as follows:
Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement.
So from this statement it is a regime being wiped off the map, not a country, not a group of people. But in the speech Ahmadinejad earlier claims that his faith that what he refers to as the regime that occupies Jerusalem can be removed is reinforced by the examples of previous regimes that have been removed, the Shah's Iranian regime, the communist regime of the USSR and Hussein's Iraqi regime.
Let's take a step back. We had a hostile regime in this country which was undemocratic, armed to the teeth and, with SAVAK, its security apparatus of SAVAK [the intelligence bureau of the Shah of Iran's government] watched everyone. An environment of terror existed. When our dear Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder the Iranian revolution] said that the regime must be removed, many of those who claimed to be politically well-informed said it was not possible. ... But our people resisted and it is 27 years now that we have survived without a regime dependant on the United States. The tyranny of the East and the West over the world must should end, but weak people who can see only what lies in front of them cannot believe this.
Who could believe that one day we could witness the collapse of the Eastern Empire? But we have seen its fall during our lives and it collapsed in such a way that we have to refer to libraries because no trace of it is left.
Imam [Khomeini] said Saddam must go and he said he would grow weaker than anyone could imagine. Now you see the man who spoke with such arrogance ten years ago that one would have thought he was immortal, is being tried in his own country in handcuffs and shackles by those who he believed supported him and with whose backing he committed his crimes.
Ahmadinejad draws a clear comparison between the Israeli regime and the regimes of the Shah, the USSR and Hussein. None of the regimes he describes were destroyed by a nuclear attack, or by genocide. The most destructive regime change Ahmadinejad mentioned would be that of Hussein's regime, but many Americans insist that the Baathist regime was removed with the minimum possible "collateral damage".
Then Ahmadinejad describes how he believes the regime will be changed
The issue of Palestine is not over at all. It will be over the day a Palestinian government, which belongs to the Palestinian people, comes to power; the day that all refugees return to their homes; a democratic government elected by the people comes to power. Of course those who have come from far away to plunder this land have no right to choose for this nation.
According to Ahmadinejad, the Palestinians - who when including the refugees are the majority - will vote. Israel will lose its "Jewish Character". And the dispute will be over.
Even if you argue that it is important for Israel not to lose its "Jewish Character", there still is no question that Ahmadinejad is not calling for genocide, or threatening Israel with nuclear weapons.
Juan Cole discusses this issue here:
President Ahmadinejad, it should be freely admitted, has, through his lack of diplomatic skills and his maladroitness, given his enemies important propaganda tools. Unlike his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier. He went to an anti-Zionist conference and quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, saying that the "occupation regime" must "vanish."
MEMRI, an organization founded by former members of Israel's military intelligence that has never been accused of anti-Israel bias translates the supposed "wiped off the map" sentence as follows:
Imam [Khomeini] said: 'This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.' This sentence is very wise.
It should be fairly clear that Ahmadinejad's call for regime change in Israel is no more genocidally mad than Bush's call for regime change in Iraq or Reagan's call for regime change in the USSR.
There is also the claim the Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier. I'll just note that Ahmadinejad has never asserted that the Holocaust did not happen, or that any given number of Jews were or were not killed during the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad mentions the Holocaust in one context only: whether it happened or not, it does not justify the oppression of the Palestinian people.
That leads us to Ahmadinejad's most recent fearsome threat to annihilate Israel with nuclear weapons. He compared Israel to a tree that would fall with one blow. Here is how the statement was translated by Iran's official news organization:
The young tree of resistance in Palestine is blooming and blooms of faith and desire for freedom are flowering.
The Zionist regime is a decaying and crumbling tree that will fall with a storm. Today even the inhabitants of the occupied Palestine, especially the African and Asian settlers are living in pain, poverty and discontent.
When read in context, including the comparison to the young tree of the Palestinian resistance, it is not actually a threat. It is just a description of the degree to which he considers the regime to be decaying. When the context was deliberately stripped, it seems as if Ahmadinejad is preparing to force Israel to fall with a single (nuclear) storm. It is an emotionally manipulative interpretation, but it is false.
If you read enough exaggerated stories about Ahmadinejad, you'll be so mad you would never agree to Iran's offer to ratify the Additional Protocolsand accept continuous on-site IAEA monitoring of its nuclear facilities, something no other country does, in exchange for an acknowledgement of Iran's legal right to enrich uranium.
On March 23, 2005, in a clearly stated desire to salvage the Paris Agreement, Iran offered a collection of solutions for objective guarantees suggested by various independent scientist and observers from the United States and Europe. The package included:
1. Strong and mutually beneficial relations between Iran and the EU/EU3, which would provide the best guarantee for respect for the concerns of each side;
2. Confinement of Iran's enrichment program, in order to preclude through objective technical guarantees any proliferation concern:
1. Open fuel cycle, to remove any concern about reprocessing and production of plutonium;
2. Ceiling of enrichment at LEU level;
3. Limitation of the extent of the enrichment program to solely meet the contingency fuel requirements of Iran's power reactors;
4. Immediate conversion of all enriched Uranium to fuel rods to preclude even the technical possibility of further enrichment;
5. Incremental and phased approach to implementation in order to begin with the least sensitive aspects of the enrichment program and to gradually move to enrichment as confidence in the program would be enhanced;
3. Legislative and regulatory measures
1. Additional Protocol;
2. Permanent ban on the development, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons through binding national legislation;
3. Enhancement of Iran's export control regulations;
4. Enhanced monitoring
1. Continued implementation of the Additional Protocol; and
2. Continuous on-site presence of IAEA inspectors at the conversion and enrichment facilities to provide unprecedented added guarantees.
Or to ask the technical experts of the IAEA to devise an inspection regime that would pose no risk of either a hidden program or of diversion of technology:
In February 2005, Iran suggested to the EU3 to ask the IAEA to develop technical, legal and monitoring modalities for Iran's enrichment program as objective guarantees to ensure that Iran's nuclear program would remain exclusively for peaceful purposes. While one member of EU3 accepted the suggestion, unfortunately the lack of consensus among the EU3 prevented resort to the IAEA as an authoritative and impartial framework for solving the impasse.
All along, the point of these exaggerations has been to make you so angry you could not be reasonable.