Soccer Dad

Wright's wrong again

Michael Rubin has taken on William Branigin and Robin Wright (the latter is credited at the end of the article) of the Washington Post for their coverage of a recent speech President Bush made about Iran. The article is skeptical of the president, dismissing his assertions, one after another. For example:

"The president was referring to the Iranian regime's previous statements regarding their desire to wipe Israel off the map," Johndroe said. "The president shorthanded his answer with regard to Iran's previously secret nuclear weapons program and their current enrichment and ballistic missile testing."

In an October 2005 speech to a conference on a "World without Zionism," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by a state-run Iranian news agency as agreeing with a statement by Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that "Israel must be wiped off the map." Iran's foreign minister later said the comment had been incorrectly translated from Farsi and that Ahmadinejad was "talking about the [Israeli] regime," which Iran does not recognize and wants to see collapse.

According to Farsi-speaking commentators including Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan, Ahmadinejad's exact quote was, "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." Cole has written that Ahmadinejad was not calling for the "Nazi-style extermination of a people," but was expressing the wish that the Israeli government would disappear just as the shah of Iran's regime had collapsed in 1979.

But Rubin counters:

But is this exculpation true? The initial quote came via an Iranian reporter whose native language is Persian and who speaks both that language and English with fluency. Then, the official Iranian translation on multiple occasions in the Iranian state press and on billboards used the English phrase: “Israel must be wiped off the map.”

Rubin also criticizes them for using Joseph Cirincione as a source and not mentioning that he's an adviser to Sen. Obama. Cirincione is a typical source for the Post's reporters and can be counted on to give an anti-administration interpretation of events.

Read Rubin's complete critique. Unsurprisingly, Juan Cole approves of the Post's reporting.

(via memeorandum)

iran, president bush.