World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (October 5, 2011)

The Guardian published an article entitled ‘BBC news chief seeks government action over Iranian 'intimidation'’. According to its author the BBC's head of global news has called on the UK government to rebuke Iran after relatives of 10 of the corporation's staff were arrested or intimidated following a documentary about the country's supreme leader. Peter Horrocks claimed on Wednesday that Iran was responsible for a "dramatic increase in anti-BBC rhetoric" and that attempts to intimidate the corporation had reached new levels since mid-September, when the BBC aired a documentary on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Horrocks said that hundreds of Iranian viewers had sent the BBC messages of support after Tehran's jamming of Persian TV had "intensified" in the past fortnight.

According to the same news agency, Turkish prime minister condemns the Bashar al-Assad regime and vows not to remain a bystander. Syria's former ally Turkey said on Tuesday it had started imposing sanctions on the regime of Bashar al-Assad and reiterated it will not remain a bystander in the face of a relentless military crackdown. "Oppressed, defenceless people are dying in serious numbers," said Recep Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister. "We cannot say 'let these deaths continue'." Erdogan did not specify the exact nature of the new sanctions but has previously hinted at a range of military and commercial measures. Erdogan, who has taken a regional lead in condemning Turkey's restive southern neighbour, compared the actions of Assad to those of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who ordered the Hama massacre in 1982 after an anti-regime rebellion.

The Hurriyet Daily News reports that Turkish military stages an exercise near the Syrian border as Prime Minister Erdoğan signals sanctions are on the way against Syria. Stepping up pressure on embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Erdoğan said he would lay out Turkey’s plans for sanctions against Damascus after he visits a Syrian refugee camp near the two countries’ common border in the coming days. Turkey’s military exercises are likely to coincide with Erdoğan planned visit to Hatay. The military said in a statement on its website Tuesday that the maneuvers would take place in the southern province between Oct. 5 and 13. Turkey has earlier said it had stopped two ships carrying arms to Syria.

The Washington post researche the question: “Did Ahmadinejad really say Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’?” Almost unnoticed, Iran this week joined the United States and Israel as one of the few countries in the world to oppose the statehood bid at the United Nations by the Palestinians. As the Tehran Times noted, the Iranian Supreme Leader “condemned any measure which would lead to the recognition of the Israeli regime and would ignore the legal right of the Palestinian people to their homeland.” In other words, Iran continues to oppose the two-state solution. But does this mean that Iran wants to destroy Israel—“wipe it off the face of the map”—as is commonly cited?  This is certainly the conventional wisdom, as seen in the statements above.  But a colleague at The Washington Post, spotting the Bachmann and Obama statements during the UN festivities last month, suggests that it is this widely cited statement by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was actually a mistranslation. The firestorm started when Nazila Fathi, then the Tehran correspondent of The New York Times, reported a story almost six years ago that was headlined: “Wipe Israel ‘off the map’ Iranian says.” The article attributed newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad’s remarks to a report by the ISNA press agency. Then, specialists such as Juan Cole of the University of Michigan and Arash Norouzi of the Mossadegh Project pointed out that the original statement in Persian did not say that Israel should be wiped from the map, but instead that it would collapse. Some might question why Ahmadinejad’s precise words are important. Clearly, the Iranian government has unrelenting opposition to the state of Israel, so much so that it even rejects Palestinian efforts at statehood if that would result in Israel remaining in the Middle East. At the same time, the words allegedly uttered by Ahmadinejad have been used to suggest a change toward a more militaristic posture by Iran toward Israel. In fact, Ahmadinejad is not the power broker in Iran; it is Khamenei. Khamenei, in fact, has been consistent in speaking of his hatred of Israel, but without a military context, as he demonstrated once again this week.  Moreover, the fact that Ahmadinejad was merely quoting Khomenei suggests that even less weight should have been given to his words, especially since there is a dispute over the precise meaning in English.  “Wipe off the map,” in other words, has become easy shorthand for expressing revulsion at Iran’s anti-Israeli foreign policy. Certainly attention needs to be focused on that—and Iranian behavior in the region. But we’re going to award a Pinocchio to everyone—including ourselves—who has blithely repeated the phrase without putting it into context.