Iran Bamboozler Still HypingEver since neocon Amir Taheri was caught red-handed fabricating a story about an Iranian law that forced Jews to wear a yellow stripe, we vowed to keep an eye on him. Sure enough, just two weeks after his bamboozle was revealed, he visited the White House with other Middle East “experts” to advise the President.
And lo! If you happened to peruse the pages of The London Times yesterday, under a headline alarmingly titled “God’s Army Has Plans To Run the Whole Middle East,” you would have found Taheri proclaiming that “The mini war that is taking place between Israel and Hezbollah is, in fact, a proxy war in which Iran’s vision for the Middle East clashes with the administration in Washington.”
“The real issue,” Taheri wants us to know, “is who will set the agenda for the Middle East: Iran or America?”
As James Wolcott points out, Taheri’s column was promptly picked up by the National Review Online and other conservative high traffic sites. Missing in those enthusiastic posts, however, was any mention of the column’s author.