Edwards: Israel not a threat to world peace

[Freddie Stubbs]

(Washington-AP) February 20, 2007 - John Edwards' presidential campaign wants to make it clear that he doesn't consider Israel a threat to world peace.

A spokesman for the 2008 Democratic candidate issued a statement Tuesday denying such a report on Variety.com.

Columnist Peter Bart reports that Edwards told a Hollywood fundraiser last month that the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities is perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace.

Edwards' spokesman Jonathan Prince says the article is erroneous. He says Edwards says one of the greatest short-term threats to world peace is Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

more: http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6116471

[IndianaGreen]

1. Israel has WMD

We cannot have Israel with nukes because that will encourage others to get nukes. Either they all have WMDs, or no one does!

[Pavulon]

14. Never used them

Israel is not a member of the npt. Iran is. Iran has been an enemy since bombing our people in lebanon, kidnapping our embassy staff, killing some, and mining the straights in the 80's

Basically they ate the cake, cant have it both ways now.

Should we go to war with iran no way, but they aren't coming over for the holidays.

[Crunchy Frog]

40. And I guess we've been an enemy

since we overthrew their democratically elected government in 1953.

[Megahurtz]

17. Totally Agree! n/t

[furman]

21. Iran wants WMD to be part of the "nuclear club"

Iran's lust for nukes comes more from their national pride, competition with their rivals, desire to counter US power, and of course threaten Israel's existence.

Israel's nuclear weapons are a deterrent of last resort. On the other hand, Muslim countries have a long history of waging aggressive wars against each other and Israel.

I highly doubt that even if Israel declared it was unilaterally disarming that it would deter Iran one bit towards their goal of attaining nuclear weapon capabilities.

Here is an article from two years ago quoting Iran's foreign minister:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/06/14/2003175020

Iran says it would reject restrictions on nuclear program

AP, TEHRAN, IRAN
Monday, Jun 14, 2004, Page 6

Toughening its stance in advance of a meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, Iran on Saturday said it would reject any internationally imposed restrictions on its nuclear program and challenged the world to accept Tehran as a member of the "nuclear club."

Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was speaking to reporters two days before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors meets to discuss Iran's nuclear program.

"We won't accept any new obligations," Kharrazi said. "Iran has a high technical capability and has to be recognized by the international community as a member of the nuclear club. This is an irreversible path."

Iran has repeatedly insisted its nuclear program is geared toward generating electricity, not making weapons, but the US and its allies say Tehran has a secret nuclear weapons program. The IAEA has wrestled for more than a year with what to do about the issue.

Iran has already suspended uranium enrichment and stopped building centrifuges. It has also allowed IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities without prior notice, part of the additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that still must be approved by parliament.

Kharrazi insisted that Iran will not give up its development of the nuclear fuel cycle, the steps for processing and enriching uranium necessary for both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Iran says it has achieved the full cycle, but is not now enriching uranium.

"That somebody demands that we give up the nuclear fuel cycle ... is an additional demand," Kharrazi said, apparently referring to demands by US and European countries that Iran halt operations of a plant it inaugurated in March in Isfahan, central Iran, that processes uranium into gas and abort plans to build a heavy-water reactor in Arak, another city in central Iran.

"We can't accept such an additional demand, which is contrary to our legal and legitimate rights," he said. "No one in Iran can make a decision to deny the nation of something that is a source of pride."

Iran has confirmed possessing technology to extract uranium ore, processing it into a powder called yellow cake and then converting it into gas. The gas is then injected into centrifuges for low-grade enrichment that turns it into fuel for nuclear reactors.

Uranium enriched to low levels has energy uses, while highly enriched uranium can be used in bombs.

Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year under mounting international pressure. In April, it said it had stopped building centrifuges. IAEA inspectors had found traces of highly enriched uranium at two sites, which Iranian officials have maintained was due to contaminated imported materials.

[Donnachaidh]

2. well guess Mr. Edwards just lost my vote

Someone grow a set and stop sucking up to Aipac.

[951-Riverside]

3. Edwards just won mine (for now).

:)

[leftynyc]

30. I've always liked Edwards

This makes me like him even more.

[Tesha]

9. It will *NEVER* happen. (NT)

[Talya in CT]

18. I concur fully

If there is no reconciliation in the middle east, there is no peace or freedom from terror for us.

I applaud *ANY* candidate or leader for stepping up and telling it like it is, by speaking the truth.

Hillary says she supports the apartheid wall :



Do we even want to guess what McCain and Guliani will have to say on the subject...not much to guess.


If our leaders keep repeating the same dumb mistakes,
and we keep electing the same dumb leaders,
we are getting what we deserve....me - Talya

[LSK]

26. no shit

[cali]

31. I take it you won't be voting for the dem nominee

Because, face it, no one who gets nominated is going to have a position any different from Edwards. Period. I'm sorry that's so, but it is, and if you won't vote for the dem because of Israel, you're just enabling another repuke pres.

[wakeme2008]

4. Subtract Edwards from my list

If Israel attacks Iran, World Peace is really threaten and Edwards is Betting they will not attack.

[Jacobin]

5. no no no. He said Israel is a threat to 'whirled peas'

Please do not stop payment on campaign check.

thank you very much

[Talya in CT]

19. ROFL

:loveya: precious and purrfect

:hi:
:hi:

[Dhalgren]

6. He was right the first time. Iran having a nuclear weapon poses

no more danger to peace than Israel having one. If Pakistan and India and North Korea have them I don't see why Iran having one will make much difference. Everyone knows that nukes are defensive weapons, not offensive ones. And Iran having a nuke certainly doesn't threaten the US in any way more than North Korea or Pakistan. I think that we pick and choose what we consider "threatening" based upon some other list of criteria...

[redqueen]

7. Exactly...

:thumbsup:

[Amonester]

10. ... and that other list of criteria has words that "look" like:

Operation
IraQNam
Liberation

on it.

ExxonMOBill contribute$ to his campaign?

[MidwestTransplant]

11. Uh sure. Who is more likely to use Nukes agains us? Iran or Israel?

Give me a break.

[Spider Jerusalem]

12. The answer to that question is of course neither...

surely you've heard of mutual assured destruction?

Only it wouldn't even be that; Iran lacks long-range bombers, and they don't have ICBM technology; a nuclear-armed Iran as such poses no threat to the US. Assuming Iran DID acquire nuclear weapons, they'd only counterbalance Israel's arsenal (which goes back to the mutually assured destruction thing).

[MidwestTransplant]

22. Surely you understand mutual assured destruction (beyond just having heard of it)

It assumes you have rational actors. I would not be willing to bet that the leadership of Iran is necessarily rational. Also, MAD further assumes similarly capable arsenals which would preclude a limited exchange. That would not be the case with a nuclear Iran, for example. Though, the rational actor assumption is more on point.

[Spider Jerusalem]

23. Except that it's the general consensus of most foreign-policy observers...

that by and large, Iran HAS behaved as a rational actor since the '79 revolution. And Israel (the only regional target for an IRRATIONAL Iran) has, according to various sources, some hundreds of nuclear weapons in its arsenal, and the means to deliver them. In the event of an Iranian first strike (which would probably be limited in scope, given the current state of their technology and the fact that they're some years away from weapons-grade enrichment, and much further from industrialising the process sufficiently to build a large nuclear arsenal), the Israeli retaliation would be crippling if not totally destructive; it would be an act of national suicide. Ahmadenijad may be a vicious, anti-Semitic lunatic, but he's far from the sole power in Iran, and I just can't see a situation where Iran initiates a first strike arising.

[Phx_Dem]

32. Iranian first strike

I can't imagine that Iran would conduct a nuclear first strike on Israel, but that is not the most likely scenario for a nuclear Iran. What is far more likely is that Iran will not be able to provide the necessary security for their nuclear arsenal, there would be a myriad of ways for non-Iranians to obtain these weapons and use them against Israel and the West.

[Dhalgren]

35. I haven't seen anything that indicates that Iranian security is any

more lax than anyone else's. I wonder were this idea comes from....

[eagler]

24. i seem to remember iran wanting to wipe Israel

off the face of the earth

[Dhalgren]

27. That is a right-wing mytho-meme. It was never said. That has been debunked

a number of times...

[eagler]

33. And Hitler was misunderstood too

[Dhalgren]

34. Good one...

:eyes:

[LSK]

28. got the exact quote? date time location?

[Shaktimaan]

29. sure

Here is info from and a link to the new york times translation of the speech and another link to the wiki article about this controversy. He totally said it.


This is a translation, by Nazila Fathi in The New York Times Tehran bureau, of the October 26 speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to an Islamic Student Associations conference on "The World Without Zionism." The conference was held in Tehran, at the Interior Ministry.

snip

Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. Is it possible to create a new front in the heart of an old front. This would be a defeat and whoever accepts the legitimacy of this regime has in fact, signed the defeat of the Islamic world. Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/weekinreview/30iran.html?ex=1172206800&en=01f8b04c2304b765&ei=5070


Many news sources have presented one of Ahmadinejad's phrases in Persian as a statement that "Israel must be wiped off the map", an English idiom which means to cause a place to stop existing.

Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, translates the Persian phrase as:
The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).
According to Cole, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map because no such idiom exists in Persian" and "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translates the phrase similarly:
his regime that is occupying Qods must be eliminated from the pages of history.

On 20 February 2006, Iran’s foreign minister denied that Tehran wanted to see Israel “wiped off the map,” saying Ahmadinejad had been misunderstood. "Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference, speaking in English, after addressing the European Parliament. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognise legally this regime," he said.

In a June 11, 2006 analysis of the translation controversy, New York Times deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner stated that Ahmadinejad had in fact said that Israel was to be wiped off the map. After noting the objections of critics such as Cole and Steele, Bronner said: "But translators in Tehran who work for the president's office and the foreign ministry disagree with them. All official translations of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on his Web site (www.president.ir/eng/), refer to wiping Israel away." Bronner stated: "So did Iran's president call for Israel to be wiped off the map? It certainly seems so. Did that amount to a call for war? That remains an open question."

On June 15, 2006 The Guardian columnist and foreign correspondent Jonathan Steele cites several Persian speakers and translators who state that the phrase in question is more accurately translated as "eliminated" or "wiped off" or "wiped away" from "the page of time" or "the pages of history", rather than "wiped off the map".

A synopsis of Mr Ahmadinejad's speech on the Iranian Presidential website states:

He further expressed his firm belief that the new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away.

The same idiom in his speech on December 13, 2006 was translated as "wipe out".

Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel

[Dhalgren]

36. The translation of "wiped off the map" has been challenged by several

experts (Juan Cole, for one, on his blog, juancole.com ). The actual translation is That "the regime will disappear from the pages of history" or something very close to that. It is in no way a threat to Israel. The "Imam" not the President were threatening to destroy Israel. there is a difference between the two translations of this phrase that is clear to anyone willing to look at it honestly.

[barb162]

37. There are good translators at the UN

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/27/ahmadinejad.reaction/

CNN) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has expressed "dismay" over the Iranian president's comments urging the destruction of Israel.

Annan, in a statement issued Thursday, reminded "all member states that Israel is a long-standing member of the United Nations with the same rights and obligations as every other member."

snip
Ahmadinejad comments were made during a meeting with protesting students at Iran's Interior Ministry.

He quoted a remark from Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, that Israel "must be wiped out from the map of the world."

The president then said: "And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism," according to a quote published by Iran's state news outlet, the Islamic Republic News Agency.

snip

[Dhalgren]

38. Odd that the UN would use an erroneous translation. Well, it just goes to show,

that anyone can have an ax to grind, uhn?

[Shaktimaan]

41. Yeah, what are the odds?

That the UN, The New York Times and even the official Iranian Presidential website would all use the same erroneous translation? I would almost not believe it except you revealed such ironclad proof, a blog, so we have to look for other plausible possibilities.

I never could have dreamed that the grasping fingers of the world Zionist conspirators were capable of penetrating quite this deep, but as the totally and completely different translation you provided proves beyond a shadow of any doubt, the above-mentioned organizations are openly willing to corrupt the truth to blatantly horrifying degrees in blind deference to their Zionist taskmasters.

Axe to grind indeed.

[Dhalgren]

42. It isn't "just a blog" and it has been discussed on the News Hour

and other places. Why don't you ask a Farsi speaker to translate the phrase for you. I have heard or read several Farsi speakers who have said that the phrase does not translate the way the US and the press has reported. I don't have a problem with this, because I am not trying to demonize the Iranians. Do I support everything they say and do? No. Do I think that the US government and its lackeys (and funders) have an "ax to grind"? Yes. I think that it is time that the US ended its "special relationship" with Israel, but that does not mean that I think everything any Iranian says is right and the gospel. I just refuse to be baited into vilifying a whole nation because some special interest wants me to. Good luck in your crusade...

[Dhalgren]

43. here is the section from Juan Cole -

"The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time."


http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html

There was several sections of discussion of this topic. It should be easy to decide which translation is closer to true. Juan Cole has no ax to grind one way or the other. He is no fan of Iran or its President....

[mdmc]

8. Bush is not a threat to world peace either

:toast: Edwards!

Way to get your footing back!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. I guess that war they just had...

doesn't count or something?

[HereSince1628]

15. Short-term or near-term? There's a difference...

Short-term implies something close in time that won't last long...well, how do you get rid of a nuclear threat so it isn't a long-term problem? If it's a short-term threat then he thinks there's a solution near at hand. as in "Invasion anyone?"

Near-term just means it's close in time. No comment on the duration.

I wonder what he actually said. Words mean things.

[catgirl]

16. Yah, Israel has been so peaceful.

They're buddies with all their neighbors. Great at diplomacy, let me tell ya.
So glad we've been the bully big brother so they can confidently challenge
the limits of human rights while we just stand by and say tsk tsk.

[Talya in CT]

20. if I voted at our dinner table, the way the US does at the UN

I would have egg all over my face, and my kids would put on the curb for garbage pickup.

Not to mention, being tortured by my own conscience. :hi:

[LSK]

25. maybe he should spend some time in the West Bank and Gaza

Everytime I start liking him, he shows his ignorance on the I/P issue.

[Crunchy Frog]

39. Nice to know that he falls into line when he gets spanked by AIPAC. n/t