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How the MSM acts as Rouhani’s PR Flacks

One of the problems with President Hassan Rouhani’s charm offensive is that he has a record. It’s a record that shows that he excuses the death penalty for protesters, defends Iran for its sponsorship of terror and boasts that he duped the West ten years ago. All of this is a matter of public record. And one doesn’t need to read Barry Rubin or Michael Ledeen or Reuel Marc Gerecht to get all this. If you read about him in the New York Times prior to May 2013, the image that emerged of Hassan Rouhani is one of the ultimate regime insider, not a reformer by any stretch.

So how does Rouhani become a “moderate?” Probably by one of the great PR campaigns. Unfortunately it isn’t one that Iran paid for; rather it is one that is being run in America’s mainstream media.

Exhibit A: After Rouhani was elected, but just prior to his inauguration he attended a Qods Day celebration. Qods Day was a holiday invented by Ayatollah Khomeini “… as a protest against Israel’s right to exist”. (In MSM-speak protesting against Israel’s right to exist is “showing support for the Palestinians,” which doesn’t sound nearly as destructive.)

At the celebration, Rouhani apparently said that Israel was a wound “has been a wound on the body of the Islamic world for years and should be removed.” Or so it was reported in the Iranian media. The comment drew a sharp rebuke from Prime Minister Netanyahu. Apparently though, Rouhani hadn’t been quite that explicit.

Never mind, Robert Mackey, the anti-Israel blogger at the New York Times couldn’t wait to report, Video Shows Iran’s President-Elect Was Misquoted on Israel.

As my colleague Thomas Erdbrink reports from Tehran, Iran’s state media scrambled on Friday to correct comments wrongly attributed to the country’s president-elect, Hassan Rouhani, after he was incorrectly quoted calling Israel “a sore which must be removed.”

Press TV, the English-language arm of Iran’s state broadcaster, subtitled Mr. Rouhani’s actual remarks, made to a reporter during the Islamic republic’s annual march for Quds, the Arabic name for Jerusalem. The video shows that the cleric did not mention Israel by name or call for its elimination, but did compare “the shadow of the occupation of the holy land of Palestine and the dear Quds,” to a “wound” or “sore” that “has been sitting on the body of the Islamic world for many years.” …

That comment remains on the prime minister’s Facebook page, still explained as his response to Mr. Rouhani’s “remarks in which he was cited as saying that Israel ‘has been a wound on the body of the Islamic world for years and should be removed.’”

Gotta love the irony of this piece harping on about how Rouhani was misquoted as the crowd chants death to Israel http://t.co/ktHbHlYPDG

— CAMERA UK (@CAMERAorgUK) August 5, 2013

The bulk of Mackey’s reporting was to demonstrate the bad faith of Netanyahu for not being quick enough to correct his response. Still there is one sentence that should make anyone think:

A longer clip of the state television broadcast showed Mr. Rouhani smiling and waving in the parade as chants of “Death to Israel” echoed in the background.

Mackey wants us to believe that since Rouhani did not “should be removed,” it means that he’s really moderate. But he was at a parade where people were shouting “death to Israel,” without protest. Doesn’t that tell you something?

At Hot Air, Jazz Shaw mocked Mackey’s reasoning:

Ummm… I’m not looking for a job as your PR guy here, (you’re not hiring at the moment, are you?) but that really doesn’t sound that much better. Are you sure you needed to issue a correction? Or are you implying that you meant to say that they’re a sore on the body of the Islamic world, but you’re really into having trendy sores all over you, so you welcome them and want to keep them?

Jonathan Tobin in a more straightforward rebuke wrote:

Is there a significant difference between saying that Israel’s existence—and not, it should be noted, any specific policy of the Jewish state—is a “sore” or a “wound” on the Islamic world and saying that it is one that should be removed? What, after all, does one do with a sore or a wound except to seek means to remove it or to have it heal and thereby disappear? Indeed, ISNA’s mistake is understandable since the extra words about removal are merely the logical conclusion of the sentence that most of Rouhani’s audience, both in person and on Iranian television, understood even without him uttering the words.

Mackey went to great lengths to show that Rouhani was a moderate and that Netanyahu responded in bad faith, but the only way to do that was to ignore the obvious.

Exhibit B: CNN’s Christine Amanpour interviewed Rouhani. One of her major takeaways was, that unlike his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani did not deny the Holocaust.

Iran’s new president has acknowledged the Holocaust, furthering the stark contrast between himself and his predecessor.

“Any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis committed towards the Jews as well as non-Jews, was reprehensible and condemnable,” President Hassan Rouhani said in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

“Whatever criminality they committed against the Jews we condemn. The taking of human life is contemptible. It makes no difference whether that life is a Jewish life, Christian or Muslim.”

The Wall Street Journal begged to differ (Google search terms):

One problem: The words attributed to Mr. Rouhani are not what he said.

According to CNN’s translation of Mr. Rouhani’s remarks, the Iranian President insisted that “whatever criminality they [the Nazis] committed against the Jews, we condemn.” Yet as Iran’s semi-official news agency Fars pointed out, Mr. Rouhani never uttered anything approximating those words. Nor, contrary to the CNN version, did he utter the word “Holocaust.” Instead, he spoke about “historical events.” Our independent translation of Mr. Rouhani’s comments confirms that Fars, not CNN, got the Farsi right.

Even if this wasn’t the case, the Journal picked up on something else:

Pretending that the facts of the Holocaust are a matter of serious historical dispute is a classic rhetorical evasion. Holocaust deniers commonly acknowledge that Jews were killed by the Nazis while insisting that the number of Jewish victims was relatively small and that there was no systematic effort to wipe them out.

Even if the CNN translation was accurate, Rouhani’s response was still an evasion.

It's not too late for @CNN to do right: Correct the Rouhani mistranslations and demand an explanation from Amanpour. http://t.co/af4YuZrzn6

— CAMERAorg (@CAMERAorg) October 6, 2013

Erik Wemple of the Washington Post, unsurprisingly, came to the defense of Amanpour.

As the Erik Wemple Blog pointed out yesterday, CNN responded to Fars’s allegations with an elegant explanation: It derived its transcript from a translator provided by Rouhani and his people.

Now, with the Wall Street Journal jumping in, CNN seems ticked. When asked about the latest development, the network said it “unequivocally” stood by Amanpour’s work and its rendering on CNN: “In the interview she asked him about the Holocaust and his answer — through his own translator — is clear. The fact that some respected news outlets are taking FARS’ allegations seriously is not only ludicrous, but irresponsible.”

Now CNN can claim that they reproduced the translation faithfully, but that doesn’t mean it was the correct translation of Rouhani’s Farsi.

Stunned by willingness of @WSJ ed page and others to jump into bed with Iranian extremist mouthpiece like Fars….

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) September 26, 2013

Amanpour’s broadside against the Wall Street Journal is dishonest. Remember the Journal claimed that it had an independent translation that agreed with Fars, they weren’t depending on Fars alone.

Exhibit C: A few days ago Prime Minster Netanyahu appeared on BBC’s Persian service. He said that if Iranians were really free “… they could wear jeans, listen to Western music and have free elections.” (The BBC didn’t judge this line to be significant and didn’t include it in a news report about the program.)

However, a number of Iranian bloggers disagreed and somehow this became a news story. Max Fisher of the Washington Post (the Post’s version of Robert Mackey) wrote Why it matters that Netanyahu doesn’t know that Iranians wear jeans:

Netanyahu’s error, as a factual point, was not a particularly significant one. Iran does have clothing restrictions, even if he overstated them. But the comment came as part of his larger appeal to the Iranian people, in which he seemed to suggest that they overthrow their government. “You, the Persians, will never get rid of this tyranny if it is armed with nuclear weapons,” he said, alluding to the protests of 2009. Among Iran analysts, though, it’s generally accepted that most Iranians within the country want to see their system reformed, not toppled, and that 2009 was a part of that. The mission of overthrowing the regime is a mostly Western one, though the Obama administration has moved away from it. It’s also a goal that tends to rally Iranians around their government and against the West, not the other way around. …

The biggest obstacle to any nuclear deal or larger detente may ultimately come from the hard-liners within Tehran, up to and including the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Their largest objection is that the Westerners cannot be trusted because they’re bent on the Islamic Republic’s destruction, a fear that Netanyahu’s framing of the matter doesn’t help. Their biggest political weapon is Iranian nationalism tinged with anti-Western ideology; any time Iranians feel lectured by an Israeli leader, that sentiment risks ticking up a bit.

This is such an ignorant reading of Iran. Iran wants a deal that will reduce sanctions. The West seems to want a deal, any deal. That being the case, Iran will probably get some sort of deal that will keep its nuclear technology where it is for a limited time and get some sanctions lifted in return. Netanyahu’s speech really is irrelevant to that calculation.

https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/386874670437244929

If Fisher’s column wasn’t enough, Thomas Erdbrink, the Tehran correspondent of the New York Times, wrote a whole NEWS article about Netanyahu’s Iranian Twitter critics.

Netanyahu’s mis-statement isn’t that important in the scheme of things, but that didn’t stop reporters at the Washington Post and New York Times for trying to blow it up into something significant.

Exhibit D: This week the Times of Israel uncovered an interview Hassan Rouhani had with an Iranian TV station shortly before the election.

Rouhani, who was being interviewed by Iran’s state IRIB TV (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) on May 27, less than three weeks before he won the June 14 presidential elections, was provoked by the interviewer’s assertion that, as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in 2003-5, “everything was suspended” on the nuclear program under his watch.

Smiling but evidently highly irritated by the suggestion, Rouhani called it “a lie” that only “the illiterate” would believe, and said that “whoever is talking to you in your earpiece” was feeding false information. He proceeded to detail how Iran, in fact, had flagrantly breached the October 2003 “Tehran Declaration,” which he said “was supposed to outline how everything should be suspended.”

Although Iran issued a joint statement with visiting EU ministers in October 2003 setting out its pledged obligations under the Tehran Declaration, in practice, Rouhani said in the interview, “We did not let that happen!”

(Robert Mackey reported on this interview in May, but without explaining that Rouhani was admitting to breaking a pledge he made in October, 2003.)

“We halted the nuclear program? We were the ones to complete it!"
Rouhani in interview on his role as the Iranian… http://t.co/ugt6dvtInC

— STOP THE BOMB (@STOP_THE_BOMB) October 7, 2013

While allowing that he still believes that it’s “worth testing Rouhani’s intentions through intensive diplomacy and negotiations,” Jeffrey Goldberg nonetheless acknowledges:

Rouhani, in the interview, was in the midst of a presidential campaign and getting pressured from his right. So it’s possible that he reacted defensively in the heat of the moment. But consider this statement, which he wrote in 2011: “While we were talking to the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in Isfahan.”

These are not the words of someone who wants to end Iran’s nuclear program. Taken together, Rouhani’s statements sound like those of a man who is proud of the program and believes he may have devised a way to carry it to completion: By speaking softly, smiling and spinning the centrifuges all the while.

This is not something that Robert Mackey, Erik Wemple, Christiane Amanpour, Max Fisher or Thomas Erdbrink thought was newsworthy. But if the Iranian nuclear negotiations are a big news story and the new moderate president demonstrated that in the past he has seen negotiations as means for advancing Iran’s military nuclear program, isn’t that newsworthy?

The first three exhibits demonstrated the lengths that the American media will go to to reinforce their narrative that Hassan Rouhani is a peace loving moderate and that Benjamin Netanyahu is an unhinged warmonger. In all three, they got the stories wrong, though none of these stories were really major.

The fourth exhibit demonstrated the degree to which they will ignore a significant news story if it doesn’t fit their preconceived narrative. Their reasoning must be something like: Rouhani is a moderate who wants to negotiate in good faith with the West, therefore he didn’t really deceive the West ten years ago.

Iranian Diplomat Lies; UN Credibility Dies (Again)

After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United last week, a number of op-eds in both the New York Times and Washington Post criticized him.

A reading of the speech shows that it was quite skilled. Netanyahu explained how Iran is ruled by a regime that is currently destabilizing the Middle East and exporting terror globally. He also explained how, in the past, Iran used the illusion of moderation and negotiations to advance its nuclear program. (This is something that then candidate Hassan Rouhani boasted about in a recently reported video.) But Netanyahu wasn’t arguing to attack Iran. He was arguing to keep sanctions in place, and strengthen them if necessary, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. (In fact the public statements of the Obama administration don’t sound that different from what Netanyahu said about sanctions.) The threat of military force was meant as a last resort.

Still it didn’t stop journalists from mocking Netanyahu. Though he didn’t criticize Netanyahu’s speech, Max Fischer amplified a mistake Netanyahu made into a major policy gaffe.

American journalists weren’t the only ones to scorn Netanyahu

Last week after Netanyahu’s speech, Iran was granted the right of reply.

The Iranian diplomat who was charged with the task was First Secretary Khodadad Seifi.

Both Seifi, and parts of his formal response were quoted in various news sources. For example, here is the New York Times:

Iran swiftly issued a rejoinder. Khodadad Seifi, first secretary at Iran’s mission to the United Nations, said that his country had found Mr. Netanyahu’s speech inflammatory, rejected the notion that Iran was building a nuclear arsenal and asserted its right to self-defense.

“The Israeli prime minister better not even think about attacking Iran, let alone planning for that,” the Iranian diplomat said. He added that Iran’s “smile policy” was better than “lying.”

https://twitter.com/NoahPollak/status/385739771621826561

These quotes came from the end Seifi’s response. But what’s more interesting is what Seifi said at the beginning. The New York Times noted generally that Seifi “rejected the notion that Iran was building a nuclear arsenal.” Specifically, this is what he said:

All Iranian nuclear activities are, and have always been, exclusively for peaceful purposes.
Iran continues to fully cooperate with the IAEA and all its nuclear activities are carried out under surveillance cameras of the Agency and its resident inspectors who regularly visit all nuclear sites and measure and seal enriched uranium containers.
Some of Iran’s cooperation with the Agency have been beyond its legal obligations. They are carried out to build more trust and confidence.
As a result, non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran has always been confirmed by all reports of the Agency. The latest IAEA report, dated 28 August 2013, states that “the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement.”

At best this is misleading; at worst it is a bald faced lie. Here are some selected accusations from the IAEA report (.pdf) that Seifi cited to “prove” that Iran was not “building a nuclear arsenal.”

Contrary to the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities in the declared facilities referred to below. …

Iran has not provided a substantive response to Agency requests for design information in relation to announcements made by Iran concerning the construction of ten new uranium enrichment facilities, the sites for five of which,
according to Iran, have been decided. …

Contrary to the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, Iran has not suspended work on all heavy water related projects, including, at Arak, the ongoing construction of the Iran Nuclear Research Reactor (IR-40 Reactor), which is under Agency safeguards, and the production of heavy water at the Heavy Water Production Plant (HWPP), which is not under Agency safeguards. …

In resolution 1929 (2010), the Security Council reaffirmed Iran’s obligations to take the steps required by the Board of Governors in its resolutions GOV/2006/14 and GOV/2009/82, and to cooperate fully with the Agency on all outstanding issues, particularly those which give rise to concerns about the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme, including by providing access without delay to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the Agency. As indicated in Section B above, it has not been possible for the Agency to begin substantive work with Iran in this regard. …

As the Agency has repeatedly made clear to Iran, the extensive activities that Iran has undertaken at the aforementioned location on the Parchin site have seriously undermined the Agency’s ability to conduct effective verification. It remains essential that Iran provide substantive answers to the Agency’s detailed questions regarding Parchin and the foreign expert, as requested by the Agency since February 2012,and provide access to the location, without further delay.

https://twitter.com/Martin_Kramer/status/385841099010355200

Imagine for a moment that a body of the U.N. had made charges against Israel, no matter how baseless; you can be sure that many of these same reporters would have decided that was newsworthy. Here the IAEA documents Iranian subterfuges to create a nuclear arsenal and no one bothered to check if the Iranian diplomat’s defense of his country was accurate. All they were concerned about were his rejoinders to Netanyahu!

So a diplomat lied. It’s no big deal. A diplomat’s job is to present his country in the best possible light, even if that requires spinning or bending the truth. Seifi just bent the truth past the breaking point.

Additionally, Iran was so upset with the IAEA report (that supposedly affirmed that it was cooperating with IAEA) that it responded with an impolitic letter accusing the IAEA of overstepping its bounds. If Iran’s official response to the IAEA report was so strong, it’s not possible that one of its diplomats wouldn’t know.

But there’s more to the story.

Last week, after PM Netanyahu’s speech, the U.N. announced that Iran would server as he rapporteur for General Assembly’s committee on Disarmament and International Security, otherwise known as the First Committee. Claudia Rosett explains why this selection is such a travesty:

This is worse than the fox reporting on the henhouse. For starters, it is one more front on which the UN, while sanctioning Iran via the Security Council, lends legitimacy to Iran by giving it slots that imply it is a member in good standing of the fabled international community. And then there’s the problem that Iran’s regime has become highly adept at exploiting its UN beachheads in ways profoundly unfriendly to the free world, notably Israel and the U.S. It was Iran’s deft moves within the First Committee, for instance, that produced the charade of a nuclear disarmament meeting, starring Rouhani, at the UN General Assembly opening last week.

There’s one last sick irony. The person who will actually be the rapporteur is the exact same person who, last week, lied to the General Assembly about his country’s nuclear program: Khodadad Seifi.

What does that say about the credibility of the U.N.’s disarmament efforts?

The Columnists who Cried “Sheep”

Last week the Washington Post featured a column by David Ignatius arguing that Israel should let the United States give negotiations a chance. Ignatius used 1973 Yom Kippur War as a lesson for Israel, but he probably would have done better to use the Oslo Accords of 1993 as a lesson.

TWS Blog—Iran and the Western media's magical thinking http://t.co/DBL4T6bGxW

— Lee Smith (@LeeSmithDC) October 3, 2013

Yesterday, Thomas Friedman, argues in A Wolf, A Sheep or Something Else?:

But Iran is not North Korea. It’s a great civilization, with great human talent. It can’t keep its people isolated indefinitely. In theory, Iran’s regime does not have to keep the world out and its people down for Iran to be powerful. But do Iran’s leaders accept that theory? Some do. The decision to re-enter negotiations is a clear signal that crucial players there do not think the status quo — crushing sanctions — is viable for them anymore. Because they are not North Korea, the sanctions are now threatening them with discontent from the inside. But how much of their “nuclear insurance” are they ready to give up to be free of sanctions? Are they ready to sacrifice a single powerful weapon to become again a powerful country — to be more like a China, a half-friend, half-enemy, half-trading partner, half-geo-political rival to America, rather than a full-time opponent?

This is what we have to test. “We’ve been trying for so long to use control dynamics to contain Iran that we’ve lost sight of the fact that we actually want the Iranians — specifically the ruling elites — to change their behavior,” said Col. Mark Mykleby, a retired Marine and co-author of “A National Strategic Narrative” for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I’m all about being tough as nails on them, and I sure don’t trust them, but I also believe we need to give them the option to change their behavior.”

“This is what we have to test.”

This is Friedman being Friedman. He contrives a scenario which leads to his sole possible conclusion: We need to test the other side.

https://twitter.com/JeffreyGoldberg/status/387015190501273600

Of course, by playing on Netanyahu’s zoological metaphors, Friedman failed to acknowledge his main point: that Iran’s current behavior and history give us little reason to trust them. From Netanyahu’s speech:

But the regime that he represents executes political dissidents by the hundreds and jails them by the thousands. Rouhani spoke of “the human tragedy in Syria.” Yet Iran directly participates in Assad’s murder and massacre of tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Syria, and that regime is propping up a Syrian regime that just used chemical weapons against its own people.

Rouhani condemned the “violent scourge of terrorism.” Yet in the last three years alone Iran has ordered, planned or perpetrated terrorist attacks in 25 cities on five continents.

Rouhani denounces “attempts to change the regional balance through proxies.” Yet Iran is actively destabilizing Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain, and many other Middle Eastern countries.

Rouhani promises “constructive engagement with other countries.” Yet two years ago, Iranian agents tried to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington, DC.

And just three weeks ago, an Iranian agent was arrested trying to collect information for possible attacks against the American Embassy in Tel Aviv. Some constructive engagement! …

Last Friday, Rouhani assured us that in pursuit of its nuclear program, Iran has “never chosen deceit… and secrecy.” Never chosen deceit and secrecy?!

Well, in 2002, Iran was caught red-handed secretly building an underground centrifuge facility at Natanz. Then in 2009, Iran was again caught red-handed secretly building a huge underground nuclear facility for uranium enrichment in a mountain near Qom. Rouhani tells us not to worry; he assures us that all this is not intended for nuclear weapons. Do any of you believe that? If you believe that, here’s a few questions that you might want to ask:
Why would a country that claims to only want peaceful nuclear energy, why would such a country build hidden underground enrichment facilities?

The main thrust of Netanyahu was not “attack Iran,” but “sanctions have brought Iran to the table and prevented it from achieving a breakout capability, maintain sanctions, even while negotiating, but be prepared to intensify them if necessary.”

Friedman seems to conclude the same thing:

Secretary of State John Kerry has the right attitude: No lifting of sanctions for anything less than the airtight closure to any possible weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program. That’s the only deal worth having, and the only way Iran will decide if it really is a China in Persian clothing — or something like that.

However, in an article about the divergent aims of Israel and the United States regarding Iran, the New York Times reported:

While Washington and Jerusalem have the same stated goal of stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, there is a growing chasm over what might be the acceptable terms for an agreement. Mr. Netanyahu’s new mantra is “distrust, dismantle and verify,” and in an interview with NBC News he insisted on “a full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program,” something Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, has made clear is unacceptable. …

The United States, on the other hand, sees broad benefits to a rapprochement. And while its official position is also that Iran must forgo major elements of its existing programs — including its 18,000 centrifuges, which enrich uranium, and a heavy-water reactor that could create another pathway to a bomb — Mr. Obama has not recently used the word “dismantle” in his own public comments. Instead he has simply said that Iran must prove its program is peaceful in nature, as Mr. Rouhani insists it is. …

An American involved in devising the West’s negotiating strategy said, “The Israelis want to go back to where the Iranians were a decade ago.” The American continued: “No one in the U.S. disagrees with that as a goal. The question is whether it’s achievable, and whether it’s better to have a small Iranian capacity that is closely watched, or to insist on eliminating their capacity altogether.”

I know that the lead American negotiator said that “No deal is better than a bad deal.” But read the three paragraphs above. I see an administration strategy devoted to achieving some sort of deal. So if Iran won’t agree to terms that it deems “unacceptable,” how far will the United States go to get a deal that is “achievable?”

The United States wants a deal; Iran wants the lifting of sanctions.

An American negotiator wants to say, “We have an agreement.” An Iranian negotiator wants to say, “We did not bow to the imperialist Americans.”

Negotiations have a way of taking on a life of their own. Negotiators are loath to admit failure. So if no agreement is reached, there will pressure to lift some sanctions as “a confidence building measure.” Next they’ll reframe the terms of negotiations to claim that they achieved something. Netanyahu is warning against doing that. Would Friedman criticize a bad deal or would he hail any deal as being better than no deal because it would show that the “test” Iran’s new president was successful? Based on Friedman’s history, I’m sure he would choose the latter.

Despite Friedman’s sober conclusion, the bulk of his article is pseudo-historical and pseudo-sociological jargon. Yes, I believe that Friedman wants a test of Rouhani, but I also believe that he’s looking for a test that Rouhani can’t fail.

https://twitter.com/NoahPollak/status/386954719266344960

Worse than Friedman’s column, was last week’s Bibi’s Tired Iranian Lines by Roger Cohen.

I don’t need to critique Cohen’s column, as Elder of Ziyon has already done so quite effectively in The Editorial Malpractice of Roger Cohen. (Being wrong – willfully or not – has become something of an avocation for Cohen.)

But there’s one point to keep in mind. In a series of embarrassing columns four years ago, Cohen extolled the moderation of Iran’s leadership, then with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad serving as president.

At the time, Jonathan Tobin concluded about Cohen:

In going to Iran and then producing columns that served to justify and rationalize the behavior of its government, Roger Cohen was not a foolish pilgrim manipulated by evil men who exploited his openhearted desire for understanding. Rather, he was a writer with an agenda to smash any hope for restraint of the Iranian regime and to split the U.S.-Israel alliance. Though he cannot be said to have lied on the scale of a Walter Duranty, in his determination to portray Tehran in a sympathetic light and disarm those who see its drive for nuclear weapons as an existential threat to the Jewish State as well as the West, Cohen sacrificed his credibility as a journalist. Even more, by using the helpless Jews of Iran as the linchpin of his campaign, Roger Cohen has behaved in a manner so shameful that his reputation as an apologist for those who threaten genocide may well live as long as Duranty’s infamy.

Even when Ahmadinejad was President, Cohen was painting him as a sheep. He continues to do the same. So too, does Thomas Friedman, even if not as explicitly.