Iran FM: Wipe Israel From the Map? When Did We Say That?

Oh, I dunno … every day for the last 46-plus years? Along with unending chants of “Death to America”?

Iran’s foreign minister has undertaken a world tour of sorts to get out from under the threat of more American action over their nuclear program. Part of Abbas Araghchi’s strategy is to recast pretty much all of the previous rhetoric from the regime since its 1979 founding as philosophical rather than actionable. Araghchi told Bret Baier, for instance, that the regime has never contemplated “wiping Israel off the map.” Credit the Fox News host for not laughing out loud at this claim:

Iran’s FM Araghchi to @BretBaier: “it has never been Iran’s policy to wipe out Israel from the map.”

Here are 5 exact quotes straight from Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei himself:

1. “Israel will not exist in 25 years.”

2. “The Zionist regime is a malignant cancerous tumor… pic.twitter.com/PvaAqZlih6

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 22, 2025

2.  “The Zionist regime is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and will be removed, God willing.”

3.  “The fake Zionist regime will disappear from the political geography of the region.”

4.  “This cancer will definitely be eradicated, God willing, at the hands of the Palestinian people and resistance forces.”

5.  “The Zionist regime is doomed to eradication and will vanish from the region.”

Yeah, but did he ever say “wiped”? Like, with a cloth? Aha! Oh, wait, they actually did:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has referred to Israel as a “cancerous tumor” that will be “uprooted and destroyed.”

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a “World without Zionism” conference in 2005, repeated a phrase from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution, that Israel “must be wiped off the map.”

Most recently, Iranian Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari said on state TV in June that Iran must “annihilate” Israel, according to a translation of the remarks by MEMRI TV, the media arm of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Basically, Araghchi keeps proving why the West can’t trust Iran with any kind of deal, let alone one that allows Iran the ability to enrich uranium on its own. They lie constantly and have lied consistently for more than two decades about the pursuit and purpose of their nuclear programs. That was particularly true with the JCPOA, which Araghchi negotiated with the Barack Obama administration and the five European countries, and then proceeded apace toward a nuclear weapon anyway. The Iranians were within weeks or even days of putting together a nuclear weapon when Israel and the US canceled their program from the Iranians’ own airspace. 

Most of the Baier interview focused on their demand to pick up where they left off. Araghchi acknowledged that the attacks set back their program by several years, but claimed that “enrichment is so dear to us” that they will never negotiate an end to it. Baier brings up the fact that Iran enriched uranium far beyond any peaceful or civilian uses, which Araghchi sidestepped, while claiming that Iran has no real animosity toward any of the ‘Satans’ it so regularly promises to destroy:

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Fox News that Tehran cannot not give up on its uranium enrichment program which was severely damaged during the Israel-Iran war last month. …

“It is stopped because, yes, damages are serious and severe. But obviously we cannot give up of enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists. And now, more than that, it is a question of national pride,” the foreign minister told the Fox News show “Special Report with Bret Baier” in a clip aired on Monday.

The foreign minister said the damage to the nuclear facilities in Iran after U.S. and Israeli strikes was serious and was being evaluated further.

“Well, our facilities have been damaged, seriously damaged, the extent of which is now under evaluation by our atomic energy organization. But as far as I know, they are seriously damaged.”

If nothing else, the full interview below shows that the Iranian regime is consistent. They are approaching this with the same position as the talks before before the 12 Day War, as in the negotiations in 2015, and as in every day since 2002 when the National Council of Resistance of Iran exposed their nuclear program and its ambitions. Araghchi thinks that Iran can reset the talks on the same set of demands and threats that produced the JCPOA. They refuse to recognize that the situation has dramatically changed, nor to consider that their exposure as a paper tiger in the first hours of the war affords them much less leverage — not to mention the loss of their proxy armies across the region.

Time to ramp up the maximum-pressure campaign. If the regime won’t deal in good faith and recognize reality, then let reality catch up to them on the streets of Tehran instead.