When former president of Iran Ahmedinejad said that Israel would one day “vanish from the pages of time” many reports claimed that he said to “wipe Israel off the map”. The claim was based on an early mistranslation of Ahmedinejad’s speech by an Iranian news agency. Even after language experts pointed out that the claim was false the mistranslated phrase was used over and over to demonize Ahmedinejad and to claim that he wanted to attack Israel.
Now that Ahmedinejad is gone some new Iranian devil is needed. As the current president Rouhani is seen as a “moderate” the demonetization propaganda is now set to a higher target. A phrase from a recent talk by the supreme leader Ali Khamenei is mistranslated to make him the new bogey man.
A recent Washington Post report includes this:
Israel defends its vociferous campaign against the agreement by pointing out that Israel is the object of Iranian taunts, and saying that a nuclear Iran is not only a geopolitical challenge for Israel, but poses an existential threat. The most recent proof, officials say, are comments last week by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, who referred to Israel as “the rabid dog of the region” and promised that “the Zionist regime is doomed to destruction.”
The link in that graph goes to an earlier WaPo piece which claims:
[Kerry] spoke hours after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, referred to Israel as the warmongering “rabid dog” of the Middle East during a speech to military commanders in Tehran.
But that is not at all what Khamenei said. He did not refer to Israel as the warmongering “rabid dog”. As Arash Karami, who is from Iran, writes for Al-Monitor:
“Sometimes this is heard from the enemies of Iran, such as from the sinister mouth of the unclean rabid dog of the region in the Zionist regime,” [Khamenei] said, in a reference to Israeli’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A correction at the end of the Al-Monitor piece explains:
Correction: An earlier version based on the transcript of several Iranian news agencies wrote that Ayatollah Khamenei called Israel a “rabid dog.” The correct text and audio was provided Khamenei’s website.
Al-Monitor is not the only outlet that used the correct phrase. CBN News is also aware of the corrected translation:
Khamenei called Netanyahu “…the sinister mouth of the unclear rabid dog of the region in the Zionist regime.” He added, “The Zionist regime is an imposed regime…and this regime will not endure.”
Note that the WaPo quote:
[Khamenei] promised that “the Zionist regime is doomed to destruction.”
is also wrong. According to the correct CBN News translation this was not a promise, but, like Ahmedinejad’s “vanish from the pages of time” comment, a prediction that Israel as a Zionist entity will “not endure”.
As the political discussion over the next stages of the preliminary U.S. Iran deal heats up we can expect that the mistranslated and wrong Khamenei quote will be repeated over and over again to demonize him and the Islamic Republic of Iran.