"Iran has threatened to destroy Israel, not vice versa."

I have read it repeatedly put, that willful Western misinterpretation of Iranian political rhetoric is responsible for this particular perception. And that the Iranian regime are in fact only opposed to the ideological Zionist aspect of the Israeli state, and not the physical existence of the Israeli state per se.

In other words while Iran is politically opposed to an exclusively Jewish state (as Israel maintains itself to be despite a quarter of it's inhabitants not being Jewish), such Iranian political rhetoric does not actually imply any form of literal or physical Iranian aggression against Israel.

Of course I do not know the truth of the matter. Not being a scholar in Iranian language, custom or politics.