Trenchant Criticism

A BBC report on UN criticism of Ahmadinejad:

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has said he was "shocked and dismayed" at recent comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about Israel.

Iran's official news agency reported Mr Ahmadinejad saying that the world would soon see Israel's destruction.

He said the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 showed for the first time Israel's weakness.

The Iranian leader is a trenchant critic of Israel and has said the Holocaust of European Jewry is a myth.

I love that "trenchant critic".

Mr Ahmadinejad was quoted by Irna, the official Iranian news agency, as saying: "The hegemony of the occupier regime [Israel] had collapsed, and the Lebanese nation pushed the button to begin counting the days until the destruction of the Zionist regime."

"God willing, in the near future we will witness the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime," Mr Ahmadinejad said.

That's trenchant criticism alright.

In October 2005, the Iranian president made a statement in which he envisaged the replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state. This was widely translated as a call for Israel to be "wiped off the map".

So he didn't really say that? Strange, because the BBC certainly reported those words at the time: "As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," he said, referring to Iran's late revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini".

While he has repeated similar comments many times, he has insisted that Iran is not a threat to Israel.

So that's OK then. And finally:

Israel failed to achieve its stated aims in the war with Hezbollah last year.

An Israeli inquiry into the war concluded in April that Israel's political and military leaders were guilty of "very serious failings" in handling the war.

Not strictly relevant to the point in hand, but at least it reminds us who, for the BBC, are the real bad guys here.

Update: as has been pointed out in the comments, the article has now been amended. Ahmadinejad is no longer a trenchant critic of Israel, merely an outspoken critic.

Comments

[jgm]

Mick, they did a stealth edit.