WarSclerotic

Iranian news agencies have questioned the CNN translation of an interview with Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, where he apparently called the Holocaust reprehensible and condemned killing Jews, continuing to cast himself as a moderate figure.

During his interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, the anchorwoman broached a topic that has been controversial for Iranians for the past decade. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on more than one occasion disputed historical claims over the extensive Nazi campaign to exterminate European Jewry. Rouhani’s answer was almost historic.

“I have said before that I am not a historian. And that when it comes to speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust it is the historians that should reflect on it. But in general I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity including the crime the Nazis created towards the Jews is reprehensible and condemnable. Whatever criminality they committed against the Jews, we condemn. The taking of human life is contemptible. It makes no difference whether that life is Jewish life, Christian, or Muslim. For us it is the same.”

But shortly after the interview was published, the semi-official Iranian news agency Fars said CNN had submitted an erroneous translation, and accused the American network of omitting certain parts of the interview. According to Fars, Rouhani spoke in a different tone and did not even use the word “Holocaust.”

“I have said before that I am not a historian and historians should specify, state and explain the aspects of historical events,” the Iranian outlet claimed Rouhani said. “But generally we fully condemn any kind of crime committed against humanity throughout the history, including the crime committed by the Nazis both against the Jews and non-Jews, the same way that if today any crime is committed against any nation or any religion or any people or any belief, we condemn that crime and genocide. Therefore, what the Nazis did is condemned, but the aspects that you talk about, clarification of these aspects is a duty of the historians and researchers, I am not a history scholar.”

Following Fars’ accusation over CNN’s omission of segments from the interview, Amanpour’s blog said CNN had only broadcast pieces of the discussion she had with Rouhani. Fars also noted that the interview Rouhani had given to CBS was translated more faithfully.

CNN said on Thursday said it had checked the translation, which had satisfied the Iranian president’s staff.

The Iranian president has spoken out against crimes against humanity in other interviews before, but he has refrained from using the term “Holocaust.”

“We simply say that we condemn any killing, any massacre, and therefore we condemn the massacre of the Jewish people by the Nazis, as we also condemn the other massacres that took place in the course of the war,” he said in a CBS interview.

Even in this statement, the Iranian president declined from discussing the scope of the massacre, asking that to be left to historians.

“I’ll also add that many groups were killed by the Nazis in the course of the war, Jews in specific, but there were also Christians, there were Muslims. … Why would I want to deny it? Not only do I [not] deny the criminal acts of the Nazis, we condemn it.”

Still, Rouhani went on to aver that the events of World War II should not be allowed to have an impact on today’s Middle East.

“We think that it’s time to really separate that event from what’s happening to a group of people now in the Middle East who’ve lost their homes, who have been discriminated against, who have gone through some of the worst kinds of torture that no one — even the Jewish people — would want to see.”