Two days before taking office, Iran’s President-elect Hassan Rouhani ignited a storm of criticism for his comments about Israel and the Palestinians.

Attending an annual pro-Palestinian holiday in Iran known as Al Quds Day, Rouhani said, “In our region, a sore has been sitting on the body of the Islamic world for many years, in the shadow of the occupation of the holy land of Palestine and the dear Quds,” which is the Arabic name for the city of Jerusalem.

But all three Iranian news agencies apparently misquoted him and added the phrase, “that must be removed”, and they waited a few hours before removing those offending words.

All this brought fierce retribution from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. 

“The president there has changed, but the goal of the regime has not: to achieve nuclear weapons in order to threaten Israel, the Middle East and the peace and security of the entire world,” said Netanyahu, “A country that threatens the destruction of the state of Israel must not be allowed to possess weapons of mass destruction.”

Meir Javendanfar, an Iranian-Israeli who runs the blog Middle East Analyst, said that “after eight years of Israel being called a virus and a cancer, and Holocaust denial, Israelis are very sensitive about anything that is said about their country.”

If Rouhani, nicknamed “the diplomatic sheik” for his suave sentences, is going to make a break from the bombast of his predecessor and improve international relations, he’s going to have to either do better or reach an understanding with the state news agencies.