Did the Republic of Iran state that Israel "Must be wiped off the map." or were they talking about the Zionist Regime?

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Translation controversy

Many news sources repeated the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting statement by Ahmadinejad that "Israel must be wiped off the map",[5][6] an English idiom which means to "cause a place to stop existing",[7] or to "obliterate totally",[8] or "destroy completely".[9]

The Iranian presidential website stated that "the Zionist Regime of Israel faces a deadend and will under God's grace be wiped off the map," and "the Zionist Regime that is a usurper and illegitimate regime and a cancerous tumor should be wiped off the map."[10]

Ahmadinejad's phrase was "بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود" according to the text published on the President's Office's website.[11]

The translation presented by the official Islamic Republic News Agency has been challenged by Arash Norouzi, who says the statement "wiped off the map" was never made and that Ahmadinejad did not refer to the nation or land mass of Israel, but to the "regime occupying Jerusalem". Norouzi translated the original Persian to English, with the result, "the Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."[12] Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, agrees that Ahmadinejad's statement should be translated as, "the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."[13] According to Cole, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to 'wipe Israel off the map' because no such idiom exists in Persian." Instead, "he did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."[14] The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated the phrase similarly, as "this regime" must be "eliminated from the pages of history."[15]

None of these translations, however, are entirely accurate. First, they downplay the significance of the introductory, main sentence, to which the controversial statement "eliminated from the pages of history" is subordinate. In his speech, Ahmadinejad introduced the theme of Israel's elimination by saying 'Imam-e aziz-e-ma farmoudand ke...', which means, 'Our dear Imam commanded that...' In other words, he introduced the exhortation to eliminate Israel by referring to the religious authority of Ayatollah Khomeini as well as the many statements, speeches and comments Khomeini made over the years about Israel. Secondly, the phrase 'bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad' means more than the passive, and slightly ambiguous 'must be eliminated from the pages of history.' It more literally translates into: 'it is necessary (or 'it is imperative') that it be eliminated from the pages of history.' Once one puts the entire sentence together, it thus reads: 'Our dear Imam commanded that it is necessary that the regime of occupation of Jerusalem be eliminated from the pages of history.'

The use of a passive verb is akin to the famous passive form used by Cato the Elder, to call for the destruction of Rome's archenemy, Carthage: Delenda Cartago. The latin passive was nevertheless clear in its meaning - Cato wished to exhort the citizens and leaders of Republican Rome to destroy Carthage - which they eventually did [16].

Iranian government sources denied that Ahmadinejad issued any sort of threat. On 20 February 2006, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference: "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime."[17][18][19]