I have read many times and in several different forms the statement attributed to President Ahmadinejad re: wiping Israel from the map. I have also read that he had been misquoted or his words mistranslated into English. I suspect that either of the latter is true but have nothing to back this up except various articles stating one or the other. Does anyone have more information on this? What is its source?

Mr. d.,

See Jonathan Steele:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_steele/2006/06/post_155.html

See also Juan Cole's review of the above:
http://www.juancole.com/2006/06/steele-on-ahmadinejad-of-arenas-of.html

also try googling for:
Israel map Ahmadinejad translation site:juancole.com

It was my understanding that Iran has voiced willingness to accept a "grand barbain" if it included U.S. guarantees to protect Iran from Israel and others.

Naive. The Bush administration has already decided to attack Iran. It is only a matter of when.

Iran has a very large Persian Jewish population around 25,000 who are very proud of their Iranian Jewish heritage and they say they don't want to leave Iran. Jonathan Cook wrote an article about that recently. Now I can't stand Ahmedinijad and he oppresses his own people as does the current Iranian regime but I think its interesting that Israel claims Jews are threatened by Iran given that Iran's native Jewish population is staying put and not going anywhere. So interestingly enough it is the Iranian Jews (and Muslims, Zorastrians, Bahais and other groups too) that will be under threat if the US and Israel launch a war against Iran.

Maybe we'd all be better served if Israel was wiped from the map. Seriously, what would happen to us if that were to happen? I know one thing, a lot of our current enemies in the region would no longer be so. I am so tired of people holding the emminent destruction of a smaller insignificant nation over our heads to the point where we're being bled dry in Iraq fighting a war only Israel wanted. The world would be far worse served if the US were destroyed than if that were to happen to Israel. I used to support Israel until the Israelis outed themselves the absolute users they are... ie Jonathan Pollard in the 1980's. The Israelis took all the intelligence - all 800,000 pages of top secret information and sold it to the erstwhile USSR, our arch enemy at the time. Further, it was Israel that staged a propaganda campaign saying Iraq had WMD from 1994 until 2003 when we invaded and found none. So how is it the Israelis claim to be our friend?

The defense corporations that control our policies don't make money if we talk.

also on Israel: Don't forget the USS Liberty!!!!!!!

As much as Bush and Cheney are drooling over the prospect of attacking Iran and expanding a policy of permanent war, there are powers within the country and outside (China, Russia . . .) that are holding them back. Iran, if left alone or positively engaged will become less radical. The threats only strengthen the most reactionary forces there and serve no positive purpose here. Iran is being used to foster the fear on which the neocon lunacy depends.

Not to worry. This governments ideas of permanent war are just like our economy, unsustainable. And please let's not confuse this issue of permanent war as partisan. At each and every step of the way both Paties leadership have worked together either openly or more typically in the backrooms of DC bath houses, to achieve this level of chaos and stupidity.

These folks are on auto repeat and Americans will not be fooled so fast again. When we begin to hold our own spending habits to the same standards as we want to hold our politicians we will begin to see change. Most of us through our occupations or our purchases or both, help to finance this system of corporate oligarchs. All of us have money taken from us each week to do the same. To find the guilty we must each look in the mirror and open our minds and hearts.

Over 600,000 Iraqis and Afghans have been killed by our munitions and "march to freedom". Whose freedom has yet to be seen. In Afghanistan the War Lords and Taliban are at it again. In Iraq some 3-4 million people have been displaced by our actions there. At what point do we begin to realize that you cannot gain peace through violence?

I'm going to go play Soldier Of Fortune now and kill some Nazi's. Peace.

John F. Butterfield @ 3:19 pm said:

'It was my understanding that Iran has voiced willingness to accept a "grand bargain" if it included U.S. guarantees to protect Iran from Israel and others.'

Right you are, John. In the early months of the Iraq War, the US could have gotten everything it wanted from Iran. This is the article from the WaPo.

Rice Denies Seeing Iranian Proposal in '03
Remark Adds to Debate on Whether U.S. Missed Chance to Improve Ties With Tehran

By Glenn KesslerWashington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 8, 2007; Page A18

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was pressed yesterday on whether the Bush administration missed an opportunity to improve relations with Iran in 2003, when Tehran issued a proposal calling for a broad dialogue with the United States, on matters including cooperation on nuclear safeguards, action against terrorists and possible recognition of Israel.
Although former administration officials have said the proposal was discussed and ultimately rejected by top U.S. officials, Rice, who was then national security adviser, said she never saw it.
"I have read about this so-called proposal from Iran," Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday, referring to reports in The Washington Post and other publications last year. "We had people who said, 'The Iranians want to talk to you,' lots of people who said, 'The Iranians want to talk to you.' But I think I would have noticed if the Iranians had said, 'We're ready to recognize Israel.' . . . I just don't remember ever seeing any such thing."
Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) cited a former Rice staff member, Flynt Leverett, who has publicly discussed seeing the proposal when he worked at the White House.
"Why should we accept the administration's analysis today that it is correct to yet again not engage with Iran when administration officials at the time now have concluded -- at least this one and one or two others -- that the administration was wrong?" Wexler asked Rice at the hearing.
Rice's comments add a new level of complexity to an issue that has generated debate among foreign policy experts: Did the Bush administration forgo a chance to pursue a dialogue with Iran shortly after the fall of Baghdad, when U.S. power seemed at its height?
The Iranian document, conveyed to Washington via the Swiss Embassy, listed a series of Iranian aims for potential talks, such as ending sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology and a recognition of its "legitimate security interests," according to a copy that has circulated in Washington and was verified by Iranian and U.S. officials.
In the document, Iran offered to put a series of U.S. aims on the agenda, including full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, "decisive action" against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending "material support" for Palestinian militias and accepting a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The document also laid out an agenda for negotiations, including possible steps to be achieved at a first meeting and the development of road maps on disarmament, countering terrorism and economic cooperation.
Rice dismissed yesterday the earlier comments of Leverett.

From a Thursday, August 30, 2007 entry on Informed Comment Global Affairs, a group blog run by Juan Cole, Manan Ahmed, Farideh Farhi, and Barnett R. Rubin
On September 7, 2002, The New York Times White House correspondent Elizabeth Bushmiller treated readers to an explanation of how the Bush administration planned to sell the invasion of Iraq:
White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.

The rollout of the strategy this week, they said, was planned long before President Bush's vacation in Texas last month. It was not hastily concocted, they insisted, after some prominent Republicans began to raise doubts about moving against Mr. Hussein and administration officials made contradictory statements about the need for weapons inspectors in Iraq.

The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan.

''From a marketing point of view,'' said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, ''you don't introduce new products in August.''

A centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr. Bush's speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action against Iraq, which could come early next year.
This September 11, we will have the reports from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, filtered through a White House drafted report.

I watched Vice-President Cheney's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 26, 2002, in the residence where I was staying in Kabul, Afghanistan. I heard Cheney deliver his famous falsehood:

The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago. These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.
We know the results.

This year, on August 28, President Bush spoke to another veterans' group, the American Legion. He called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism," whose "active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust." He concluded:
Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late.
But this apparently is just test marketing, like Cheney's 2002 speech. After all "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:
They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran. This anecdote is also inconclusive, but it is consistent with the depth of planning that went into the reconstruction effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hesitated before posting this. I don't want to spread alarmist rumors. I don't want to lessen the pressure on the Ahmadinejad government in Tehran. But there are too many signs of another irresponsible military adventure from the Cheney-Bush administration for me just to dismiss these reports. I am putting them into the public sphere in the hope of helping to mobilize opposition to a policy that would further doom the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and burden our country and the people of the Middle East with yet another unstoppable fountain of bloodshed.

What has been left out here is discussion about how the churches are being used to rally support for an attack on Iran - as if it would help to fulfill bible prophecy. Watch this video and listen to what Preacher John Hagee has to say about Iran, and note the notable individuals in his audience.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/rapture-ready-the-unauth_b_57826.html

dcbeltway,"So interestingly enough it is the Iranian Jews (and Muslims, Zorastrians, Bahais and other groups too) that will be under threat if the US and Israel launch a war against Iran."

What is appalling is that most American Jews and Israelis appear either to forget their co-religionists and/or fellow ethnicity, or just don't care.

I never thought I'd live to see the day when Israelis could say things that turn out to contain threats of genocide against their own ethnicity and/or religion, but that is the tenor of the rabidly anti-Iranian message most of the Western World is spouting.

I think Germany should break off diplomatic relations with the US and Israel on account of not wishing to engage in genocide - let alone indulge in it!

DuraMater Zionist groups have actually tried to pay the Persian Jews $60,000 per family to leave Iran and move to Israel because they realize that this group of brave souls who love their nation, and their thousands of years of proud history on Iranian soil, defies their propoganda and doesn't serve their agenda.

http://www.cjp.org/page.html?ArticleID=148952

This is also an interesting article on the history of Persian Jews from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Jews