Excellent piece by an informed source. The right-wing case against Iran has been ginned up by the Israel-first lobby, the group that Colin Powell called "the JINSA crowd." They are worried that Iran has an underground nuclear program that Israel could not take out, as it did the Iraqi reactor in 1981. One of the requirements for that case is to misquote Ahmadinejad's statements about Israel, to imply that Iran was going to do the annihilating. Farsi speakers note that the comments are usually in the passive voice...Israel will disappear from the map. Not the same as saying "We will wipe...etc." The anti-Iran lobby also suggests that Iran's hostility is totally unprovoked, as if the U.S. didn't overthrow Mossadeq's government, didn't support the Shah and SAVAK, and didn't support Saddam in his 8-year war with Iran. In fact, when Donald Rumsfeld visited Baghdad as Reagan's envoy, the U.S. knew that Saddam was using WMD against the Kurds. Chemical weapons? See no evil, speak no evil. Hooman Majd has it right; John McCain is clueless.