Iran's President In Fact Threatens to Attack Israel First

Not that I don't believe that this weasel would out-and-out lie to suit his purpose, but Ahmadinejad weaseled out of a question posed by an AP reporter in a way that made people believe he has promised no attack on Israel.

Thus, CBS says in a headline:
Iran's Ahmadinejad: No Attack On Israel --AP Interview: Ahmadinejad Says Iran Will Not Attack Israel Or Any Other Country

And the Edmonton Sun reports: Iran: No Attack on Israel

And so on, and so forth.

This is quite different from what he actually said:

"Iran will not attack any country," he answered, when asked if his country would ever strike first against Israel.

The problem with this is that Iran does not recognize Israel as a country. To cite Wikipedia on Iran-Israel relations:

Iran does not even formally recognize Israel as a country, and official government texts often simply refer to it as the "Zionist entity" or the "Zionist regime."

So he sidestepped the question of whether he would attack Israel, and stated instead that Iran would not attack any *country*.

This is quite a dangerous statement. To give a parallel, Hitler, and the Nazi's considered Jews to be subhumans. Imagine if he were asked whether he planned to kill any Jews, and he stated emphatically that Germany would not kill any humans.

Yet he gets away with this statement, and scores all sorts of political points with this statement, because the AP reporter did not think to follow it up with: "And is Israel a country in terms of this statement you just made?"And other news sources just expand it to what they expect to see. Thus, CBS expanded it to Ahmadinejad Says Iran Will Not Attack Israel Or Any Other Country, explicitly putting Israel in there where he did not.