How To Go To Heaven: www.jesus-is-savior.com www.antiwar.com July 2, 2007 Caught Red-Handed: Media Backtracks on Iran's 'Threat' by Arash Norouzi For close to two years, the media has stubbornly clung to a long discredited story about the Iranian president's alleged threat to "destroy Israel" with nuclear weapons Iran doesn't have and denies any intent to acquire. "Wiped off the map, wiped off the map," they bleat incessantly, even though his actual words, "The Imam [Khomenei] said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time," were paralleled with the fall of regimes like the Soviet Union and Iran's former US-installed monarchy (see this for a thorough refutation of this claim). From the start of his presidency, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has rhapsodized regularly about the demise of the "Zionist regime" in various metaphorical terms. He and his associates in the Iranian government have compared its fate to that of the pharaohs of Egypt and the former aparthei! d regime in South Africa (which they also did not recognize), but never have they threatened to start a war with any country. Yet the rumor persists. Top respected journalists, advocates for peace and dialogue with Iran, and individual Iranians themselves bring up the misquote regularly, as do noted Iranian-American scholars. The media's constant drumbeat has even duped top world leaders into believing the myth. On Oct. 29, 2005, the false quote was officially condemned by all 15 Security Council ...
0 comments: