Iran's nuclear program: 4 things you probably didn't know - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Israel should be "wiped off the map." - CSMonitor.com

Iran's nuclear program: 4 things you probably didn't know - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Israel should be "wiped off the map." - CSMonitor.com: "Ahmadinejad "never... uttered the words 'map,' 'wipe out,' or even 'Israel'" in his statement.  Rather, he argued, the translation should have been that "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."  (Both The Washington Post and The Atlantic came up with similarly variant translations.)

This is a key difference, Mr. Norouzi argued, because Ahmadinejad used the "vanish from the page of time" idiom elsewhere in his speech: when describing the governments of the Shah of Iran, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein.  While war and revolution were involved in the three regimes' collapse, none of them, Norouzi argued, were "wiped off the map."  Rather, they underwent regime change.  This suggests in turn, he said, that Ahmadinejad was calling for regime change in Israel, not nuclear genocide.  Juan Cole, another critic of the speech's translation, compared Ahmadinejad's statement to Reagan-era calls for the end of the Soviet Union."

"on Aug. 9, 2005, [the country's supreme leader and foremost religious figure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] issued a fatwa against the production and use of nuclear weapons, it was not simply a sermon – it carried political weight."

"in 2000 that Iran ranked second only to the US in gasoline consumption. But despite Iran's huge oil production, it lacks the facilities to refine it into gasoline, forcing it to import a barrel of oil for every eight it exports. According to Majd, some Iranians blame their lack of refining infrastructure on Western sanctions."

"Both US and Israeli intelligence agree that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program."