The Media’s Magical Thinking About Iran

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Blame it on Rouhani Fever. Earlier this week, Foreign Policy’s website reported that for the first time in decades an Iranian official used the word “Israel”—“not Zionist entity,” “not occupying regime”—to describe the Jewish state. Later acknowledging their story was wrong (“Death to Israel” after all is the Islamic Republic’s best known slogan), the editors ran a correction, which is more than Christiane Amanpour can manage.

She continues to claim that Iranian president Hassan Rouhani condemned the Holocaust in his CNN interview with her even though the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page contracted for an independent translation that showed Rouhani never said anything of the sort. Instead, according to the Journal, Rouhani skirted the issue, explaining that he was not a “history scholar,” and made vague reference to “crimes against Jews and non-Jews.” Also pushing back against the Amanpour version is the Iranian news agency Fars, which contended that CNN had falsified the translation and denies that Rouhani said anything about the Holocaust. Amanpour’s response to the fact that these very different media organizations intersected at reality was to tweet: “Stunned by willingness of @WSJ ed page and others to jump into bed with Iranian extremist mouthpiece like Fars.”

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