Don’t trust, just verify

The big news out of Hassan Rouhani’s charm offensive was that the Iranian president of smiling visage and urbane demeanor had turned away from the anti-Semitic Holocaust denials of predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called the murder of 6 million Jews “a lie and a mythical claim.”

In a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour, the Farsi-speaking Rouhani was quoted by a translator as using the word “Holocaust” in a context that accepted the atrocity as a historical fact and pairing it with the descriptions “reprehensible” and “condemnable.”

The world swooned. Not here. Under the headline “Such a nice madman,” we offered that Rouhani’s acknowledgement was so qualified and grudging as to suggest skepticism about the extent of the Nazi mass murder of Jews and others. Even so, we got taken like everyone else.

Relying on the services of Iran’s official translator, CNN put Rouhani’s remarks as follows:

“I’ve 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 that Nazis committed towards the Jews as well as non-Jews, is reprehensible and condemnable. Whatever criminality they committed against the Jews, we condemn.”

In fact, according to subsequent translations, Rouhani did not utter the word for “Holocaust”; he referred more generally to “historical events.”

In fact, he said: “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.”

This is an old tactic of Holocaust deniers: Give yourself a little “who am I to say” wiggle room.

In fact, Rouhani wrapped his entire “condemnation” in the vaguest possible terms, saying “generally we fully condemn any kind of crime committed against humanity throughout the history.”

Our consultations with a native speaker and expert in Iranian politics confirmed this account.

“He’s a very eloquent speaker,” said our expert. “He does not want to be very specific about this because he’s taking into consideration audiences here . . . and audiences back home.”

Let this be a lesson to President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry as they embark on talks over Tehran’s nuclear program. Having drawn a red line on Syria that then proceeded to fade in the clear light of day, Obama faces a massive test. “I don’t bluff,” he has said — insisting that an Iranian nuke is unacceptable and that all options, including force, remain on the table.

Ambiguity is Iran’s ally. Clarity and certainty are the enemy of an Israel-hating regime that is pushing toward developing nuclear weapon capability that would be a disaster for America and the world.