A few days ago, I posted this rather unbelievable statement from the Iranian Vice President, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei:
“Iran wants no war with any country, and today Iran is friend of the United States and even Israel…. Our achievements belong to the whole world and should be used for expanding love and peace.”
Now, quite predictably, we are being told it was all one big misunderstanding (hat tip: Elder of Ziyon).
The following day, 20 July, Rahim-Masha’i denied the reports of his speech. “This is not what I meant and these are all lies. During my speech I also said that Israel was dead and only its funeral ceremony has been postponed, but they [the press] did not publish these statements,” Iranian state radio quoted him as saying.
Fars news agency, which appears to have been the sole source for the vice-president’s original, contested, remarks, cited him as declaring: “By ‘Israel’ I meant the Palestinian and Jewish people living in Palestine, not the immigrant Jews or Zionists, because we do not recognize the Zionists at all.”
“Sorry, when I said Iranians are friendly with the Israeli people, actually I wanted to say Palestinian people”, Mr. Esfandiar Rahim Mosha’i, the Iranian vice-President in charge of Tourism and Cultural Heritage Organisation corrected on 21 July 2008 his earlier statement in which he had said that “Iranians are friendly with the American and Israeli peoples. Actually, we think the American people are one of the best in the world.”
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In an official, but mild denial, published by the same Fars News on Monday 21 July, Mr. Rahim Mosha’i says “it is obvious that Iran can not be friendly with Zionist usurpators. Everyone should have understood that I made a mistake by saying we are friendly with the Israeli people while I had the Palestinians in mind,” he said, adding “however, as stated by our dear President several time, Iranians have no enmity with the American or the Jewish people, which we distinguish from the Zionists who occupied Palestinian’s homeland.”
Even Barack Obama would be scratching his head over that flip-flop.
Meanwhile, Iran Press Service notes this is not the first time Rahim-Mashaei has landed himself in hot water.
This is not the first time that Mr. Rahim Mosha’i, whose daughter is married to the son of the President, has provoked the ire of the orthodox media, angered at seeing him watching a performance of belly dancers in Ankara.
I would love to have heard his excuse on that occasion. Let me guess..he was being tortured by the Zionist ursurpators?
