In the Sept. 28 column, “Iran leader crafts ignorant legacy,” the authors make a number of erroneous claims used to justify placing Draconian sanctions on Iran, which would cause much misery for its people.

First of all, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the Holocaust did happen but those who question it shouldn’t be imprisoned (as they are in Europe), and the Holocaust is improper justification for Israeli oppression of Arabs.

Second, he never has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” – if you know Farsi, he called for the “occupying regime” to be removed – meaning that Iran’s president agrees with United Nations Resolution 242, that Israel should immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and return to its 1967 borders.

More importantly, Ahmadinejad does not control Iran’s foreign policy – the Ayatollah does, and he has endorsed the Arab League’s position that Israel should be recognized and relations should be normalized providing that it ends its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.

The rights of Jewish citizens in Iran are fully protected – a number of them serve in the Parliament, the largest Jewish charity hospital in the world is in Iran and a number of the Ayatollah’s friends and advisers are devout Jews.

The authors quote Benjamin Netanyahu’s absurd assertion that Iran – a country that has never committed the crimes of genocide, aggression, or occupation – is comparable to Nazi Germany. While Netanyahu served under Prime Minister Begin, he gleefully executed the order given to him about Palestinians waving their national flag (which Israel outlawed): “Break their bones.” Quoting a man who has gone on record as supporting the torture of children to lecture us about war and peace is ridiculous.

There is one Iran-Nazi link. When the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically-elected leader in 1953, they used actual Nazi manuals to train the installed Shah’s brutal SAVAK police force. The SAVAK were given lists of socialists and communists by the CIA and tortured and executed them and their families.

All of this was done with U.S. taxpayer dollars, with support by Israelis. If another country did this to us, wouldn’t we be angry?

And yet, Iran has approached the U.S. government several times for direct peace talks (the last attempt being in 2003); every single time the U.S. has refused to meet with them. America refuses to forgive Iran for ousting the dictator it forced on the Iranians, and for defeating Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war when the U.S. funneled money and guns to Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens.

There is no evidence Iran has violated any international agreement. The Ayatollah has deemed nuclear weapons to be immoral by Islam (and I think the authors would agree that they take religious law seriously in Iran).

The hysteria about Iran from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the oil lobby (which is extremely upset that Iran has signed on to oil deals with China and has started selling on the euro) shouldn’t be encouraged by student leaders.

After all, the last time the Democrats, Republicans, and AIPAC agreed on something, we invaded Iraq. According to the prestigious medical journal Lancet, a million people have died as a result of that. H.R. 1400: Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007 is a cruel package of economic sanctions that could escalate into war. Instead, we should apologize to the Iranians for the suffering we’ve caused them, confront Israel on its illegal occupation, and have face-to-face negotiations with the Iranians over their peaceful nuclear program.

- Zaid Jilani is a sophomore from Kennesaw majoring in international affairs.