Washington Post's Curious Iran Reporting (that's putting it politely)

William Branigin and Robin Wright have a rather factually flawed Washington Post article on President Bush’s speech on Iran that suggests either extreme sloppiness or that integrity has gone out the window in the news section.

(It wouldn’t be the first time with Robin Wright, who earlier turned a deeply-partisan Iran lobby group’s press release into a news story).

In an October 2005 speech to a conference on a "World without Zionism," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by a state-run Iranian news agency as agreeing with a statement by Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that "Israel must be wiped off the map.” … According to Farsi-speaking commentators including Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan, Ahmadinejad's exact quote was, "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."

But is this exculpation true? The initial quote came via an Iranian reporter whose native language is Persian and who speaks both that language and English with fluency. Then, the official Iranian translation on multiple occasions in the Iranian state press and on billboards used the English phrase: “Israel must be wiped off the map.”

Branigin and Wright's ethical problems get worse: To support dismissing President Bush’s stated concerns, they cite Joseph Cirincione. Fair enough, but wouldn't basic integrity mandate that they mention that Cirincione is not a disinterested analyst, but rather is advising Barack Obama? Indeed, Wright at least is aware of this; either she or Branigin simply chose not to include it.

But the Iranian government has not publicly declared a desire to obtain such weapons. In fact, Iranian leaders have said the opposite, repeatedly insisting that they do not want nuclear arms and asserting that their nuclear program is intended only to generate electricity.

Again, not quite true. Many Iranian officials—including those close to the Supreme Leader—describe a desire to acquire and, in some cases, use nuclear weapons:

On December 14, 2001, Rafsanjani, arguably the second most powerful man in Iran, declared, "The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would totally destroy Israel, while the same against the Islamic world would only cause damage. Such a scenario is not inconceivable."[31] Iran Emrooz [Iran Today] quoted Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Kharrazi, secretary-general of Iranian Hezbollah, as saying in a February 14, 2005, speech, "We are able to produce atomic bombs and we will do that. We shouldn’t be afraid of anyone. The U.S. is not more than a barking dog."[32]

On May 29, 2005, Hojjat ol-Islam Gholam Reza Hasani, the Supreme Leader’s personal representative to the province of West Azerbaijan, declared possession of nuclear weapons to be one of Iran’s top goals. "An atom bomb . . . must be produced as well," he said."That is because the Qur’an has told Muslims to 'get strong and amass all the forces at your disposal to be strong.'"[33] Hasani’s unpopularity among many Iranians is irrelevant. As a confidant of the supreme leader, Hasani provides a window into his thinking. In February 2006, Rooz (Day), an Iranian website close to the Islamic Republic’s reformist camp, quoted Mohsen Gharavian, a Qom theologian close to Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, one of the Islamic Republic’s staunchest ideologues, as saying it was only "natural" for the Islamic Republic to possess nuclear weapons.[34]

Branigin and Wright then gloss over the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate. They write:

In December, a U.S. intelligence review concluded that Iran stopped work on a suspected nuclear weapons program four years earlier.

A lot has been written about what the 2007 NIE (.pdf) said and didn’t say—there is no reason to repeat it all—but Branigin and Wright appear not to have read the footnote on the first sentence of the report which narrowed the definition of weapons-related work in a way that ignored Iran’s enrichment program, perfection of which constitutes the greatest obstacle to achieving break-out capacity or assembling a weapon. Indeed, in Congressional testimony last month, Director of National Intelligence McConnell stepped back from the NIE, which he suggested had been inaccurately phrased and understood. Branigin and Wright either are unaware of McConnell's testimony—or simply chose to ignore what did not fit with their own politics.

If editors still supervise newsroom integrity, it may be time for those at the Washington Post to remind some of their beat journalists—even senior ones—of the damage they can do to the Washington Post’s reputation if they turn into activist journalists, replacing basic reporting with somewhat dishonest policy advocacy.

wow. all these wayward Wrights are tarnishing the name.

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I guess the idea is that "disappearing from the page of history" is not quite as bad as "being wiped off the map." In any event, however the imams phrase, we already are intimately aware of the resutls of the doctrine made manifest.

It’s old news. They are resurrecting an already proven apologist falsehood. The Official Iranian sites said “wipe off.”

“...repeatedly insisting that they do not want nuclear arms and asserting that their nuclear program is intended only to generate electricity.”

If that were so, the Iranians would fully comply with the IAEA. But they are not.

It’s old news. They are resurrecting an already proven apologist falsehood. The Official Iranian sites said “wipe off.”

“...repeatedly insisting that they do not want nuclear arms and asserting that their nuclear program is intended only to generate electricity.”

If that were so, the Iranians would fully comply with the IAEA. But they are not.

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