It's sad just how gullible the media can be -- both blogosphere and MSM. There's a story running around that the Iranian negotiator, Mr. Rowhani, boasted in a recent speech that he deceived the Europeans about Iran's nuclear activities. But ten minutes of web research shows that the source for this story is a single website from an Iranian expatriate group in Germany -- none too reliable a source. Details below the fold.
You can find links to versions of the story by Googling for Rowhani "Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution", which generates 79 hits so far. The story shows up in the Washington Times, the Syndey Morning Herald, WorldNetDaily.com, The London Sunday Telegraph, among others. Here are some selections from the story as it appears in the Washington Times:
"Iran duped European Union negotiators into thinking it had halted efforts to make nuclear fuel while it continued to install equipment to process yellowcake -- a key stage in the nuclear-fuel process, a top Iranian negotiator boasted in a recent speech to leading Muslim clerics."
" "From the outset, the Americans kept telling the Europeans, 'The Iranians are lying and deceiving you, and they have not told you everything.' The Europeans used to respond, 'We trust them,'?" Mr. Rowhani said in a speech to the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution. "
The reporter for this story, Mr. Philip Sherwell of the London Sunday Telegraph, attributes his story to "an Iranian journal that circulates among the nation's ruling elite." He gives no further details.
I searched for the sources and eventually found a source at http://www.iran-press-service.com/...
This story appears on February 23rd.
This is an English language Iranian expatriate news service that references a Farsi language Iranian expatriate news service in Germany: http://www.iran-emrooz.net. I can't read Farsi, so my search stopped there. But this appears to be the original source of the story.
What's surprising is that people could be so gullible about a story that makes no sense. We are asked to believe that a major Iranian political figure, in the middle of a diplomatic crisis over referral to the United Nations Security Council, would publish remarks extremely detrimental to Iran. Even if you are willing to believe that Iran is that evil, can we believe that they are that stupid? I am led to suggest the following analogous story:
ABU DHABI (Al Jazeera) In a speech to a group of Administration functionaries, Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice boasted of American success in deceiving the world about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. "Our intelligence people warned us that our information was weak, but we still managed to fool the whole world", she declared. "Those left-wing folks tried to warn people that we were lying, but fortunately nobody believed them", she added.
Also interesting is the way the story changed as it went from one mouth to the next ear. The Iran Press Service presents the following quote from Mr Rowhani, which is their own English-language translation of the Farsi appearing on the Iran-emrooz site:
"This was a hard blow to the confidence the Europeans had put on us. It was a bad blow to the confidence-building process we had initiated painfully. What made the Europeans angrier with us was that from the start of our negotiations with them, the Americans were telling them that beware of Iranians. They are liars. But the Europeans were responding that they trust us. When the P2 affair blew up, the European started to strongly doubt whether we have also got designs for making nuclear bomb, as all the plans were coming from the same source".
Mr. Sherwell's version, the one that spread around the media, presents the same quote as follows:
"From the outset, the Americans kept telling the Europeans, 'The Iranians are lying and deceiving you, and they have not told you everything.' The Europeans used to respond, 'We trust them,'?"
There's a pattern in the difference between the Iran Press Service version and Mr. Sherwell's version. The Iran Press service version presents Mr. Rowhani as discussing and explaining the diplomatic problems it has faced in dealing with the Europeans. Mr. Sherwell's version presents Mr. Rowhani as boasting of the success of Iranian iniquity.
My research may be incomplete. It may be that Mr. Sherwell really did get his hands on some internal document from some source other than the obviously biased iran-emrooz site. It may be that the iran-emrooz site has solid proof of the speech. But so far, I can find no evidence of this. I'd appreciate it if others (especially somebody who can read Farsi) can dig a little deeper.