Amir Taheri Alert

Further to my last post on Greg (Jerusaelm Prize) Sheridan's dogged insistence, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida once had a thing goin' on, comes another neocon conjurer, name of Amir Taheri, who pops up from time to time on the 'opinion' pages of (where else) The Australian. In its 'Cut & Paste' for 31/3/08 we're treated to the following gem from a longer, anti-Iranian spray:-

"Amir Taheri, in the Wall Street Journal online, on how, despite the assertions of Barack Obama that theological differences would prevent it, Sunni and Shia extremists are happy to work together, and indeed with anyone else, towards the destruction of the US: 'The suicide attacks that claimed the lives of over 300 Americans, including 241 Marines, in Lebanon in 1983, were joint operations of the Khomeinist Hezbollah and the Marxist Arab Socialist Party, which was linked to the Syrian intelligence services'."

Taheri's piece is of course yet another variation on the clash-of-civilizations theme: the Arab/Muslim enemy constitutes one, unholy, undifferentiated coil of hissing serpents, regardless of secular/religious, Sunni/Shia, or national/international differences. Scratch the surface of any constituent part and underneath you'll find they're all the same, and they're all out to get US.

The only problem with this ideological construct is that, because it bears no relation to reality, its advocates are sorely tempted to play fast and loose with the facts when pushing it. Apart from the omission of relevant contextualising information, there are three major problems with Taheri's opening sentence: 1) There appears to be no such animal as the "Marxist Arab Socialist Party." There was an Arab Socialist Party kicking around in Syria in the early 50s, but that merged with the Ba'th to form the Arab Socialist Ba'th Party in 1953. There is a Lebanese Druze Progressive Socialist Party (currently in the hands of Druze chieftain and Hezbollah foe, Walid Jumblat), which couldn't by any stretch be described as Marxist. And that's about it; 2) The figure of "over 300 American [deaths]" is false. There were 2 suicide attacks in 1983 against American targets in Lebanon. The first, in April 1983 against the US embassy in Beirut, did kill 63 people, but only 17 of them were Americans (The Struggle Over Lebanon, Tabitha Petran, 1987 p 330). Taheri's "over 300 Americans" is actually 258; 3) While welcoming the action against the Marines, Hezbollah, which was still very much a work in progress in those days, has always denied responsibility for it. (For a discussion of same see Hezbollah: Born With a Vengeance, Hala Jaber, 1997 pp 79-80)

Apparently, Taheri has a track record of fixing the facts. In The Amir Taheri Story (Mother Jones 18/11/07), Jonathan Schwarz spills the beans:-

"Amir Taheri is one of the strangest ingredients in America's media soup. There may not be anyone else who simply makes things up as regularly as he does, with so few consequences...

"1) Taheri, who was once editor of a strongly pro-Shah Iranian newspaper during the 70s, left the country after the revolution. Strongly opposed to Iran's current government, he wrote a 1989 book called Nest of Spies: America's Journey to Disaster in Iran. Shaul Bakhash, a specialist in mideast history at George Mason University, reviewed the book for the New Republic and discovered important sections had been fabricated.

"2) In 2006, Taheri claimed the Iranian parliament had passed a law requiring Jews and other minorities to wear special badges in public. The story was picked up all over the world by the New York Post, the Drudge Report, and Canada's National Post. It turned out to be false.

"3) Elena Benador, PR agent for Taheri (as well as Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Ledeen, Laurie Mylroie, Richard Perle and James Woolsey) defended Taheri. Benador explained that, when it comes to Iran, accuracy is 'a luxury...As much as being accurate is important, in the end it's important to side with what's right. What's wrong is siding with the terrorists'.

"4) Six days after the Iran story was retracted, Taheri met with George Bush at the White House as part of a group of 'Iraq experts'.

"5) Norman Podhoretz, soon to become a senior foreign policy adviser to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign, wrote an article earlier this year called 'The Case for Bombing Iran'. To argue a nuclear-armed Iran could not be deterred, Podhoretz quoted the Ayatollah Khomeini: 'We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world'. Podhoretz later used the quote on the Lehrer Newshour, as did Michael Ledeen in National Review.

"6) Shaul Bakhash was surprised by the quote, never having encountered it before and finding it out of character for Khomeini. The furthest back the quote could be traced was a book by Amir Taheri.

"7) As reported by the Economist, Bakhash recently wrote for a private newsletter that no one can find the book Taheri claimed as his source in the Library of Congress or a search of Farsi works in libraries worldwide. The statement itself can't be found in databases and published collections of Knomeini statements and speeches."