Let's guess, but I am willing to bet that this doesn't receive much coverage in the western press. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defended vice-president for tourism Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei's "controversial" comments made some two months ago in which he said that "Today Iran is the friend of the people of the United States and Israel and no nation in the world is our enemy". Though the comments predictably sparked the ire of the rightwing establishment, President Ahmadinejad at a news conference in Tehran has said that "Mashaei's statement represents that of the government". He emphasized that Mashaei's comments were unrelated to the dispossession of the Palestinian people and has refused to yield to the pressure of a number of senior clergymen to sack his minister.
Mashaei's comments are a far cry from the endlessly mistranslated and intentionally distorted comments previously made by Ahmadinejad in which he was alleged to have said that "Israel should be wiped off the map". As anyone even slightly familiar with the Persian language can avow his words were distorted for the mere purpose of grabbing headlines and political expediency.
Mashaei's comments should clearly be welcomed and rightfully be seen as diffusing the propaganda that Iran has some kind of implacable enmity against the Jewish state. The two nations in fact had no problem conducting business in the course of the Iran-Iraq war, in what would make up part of fiasco which would come to be known as the Iran-Contra Affair. The reality couldn't if fact be further from the truth since the post-revolutionary Khomeinist government has always distinguished between the Jewish religion seen as part of the Abrahamic tradition and Zionism, deemed a modern ideological credo with the sole aim of depriving the Palestinian people of their national rights and cultural identity.
Mashaei's comments are a far cry from the endlessly mistranslated and intentionally distorted comments previously made by Ahmadinejad in which he was alleged to have said that "Israel should be wiped off the map". As anyone even slightly familiar with the Persian language can avow his words were distorted for the mere purpose of grabbing headlines and political expediency.
Mashaei's comments should clearly be welcomed and rightfully be seen as diffusing the propaganda that Iran has some kind of implacable enmity against the Jewish state. The two nations in fact had no problem conducting business in the course of the Iran-Iraq war, in what would make up part of fiasco which would come to be known as the Iran-Contra Affair. The reality couldn't if fact be further from the truth since the post-revolutionary Khomeinist government has always distinguished between the Jewish religion seen as part of the Abrahamic tradition and Zionism, deemed a modern ideological credo with the sole aim of depriving the Palestinian people of their national rights and cultural identity.
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