"Propaganda of the Day"
Maria Zakharova
Spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry
Мария Захарова (Telegram)
Former Guardian correspondent Said Kamali Dehghan admitted fabricating a 2010 article – an "exclusive interview" with Iranian woman Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was allegedly sentenced to stoning.
The article appeared on the front page on August 7, 2010. It sparked an international scandal: Western politicians demanded the woman's release, and Iran came under pressure from diplomatic services of several countries. Dehghan is quoted as saying:
The article remains on the Guardian website without any relevant notice or retraction.
It's important to understand the context here: the article was published at a time of maximum pressure on Iran – in 2010, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1929, imposing the harshest sanctions to date. The West needed an emotional story to justify the sanctions regime. A woman sentenced to stoning was the perfect image. The story instantly spread across global media, becoming an argument for all those promoting Iran's isolation.
This is not the first time that Said Kamali Dehghan has admitted that, while working for Western media, he was forced to participate in anti-Iranian propaganda campaigns. In 2020, he disowned his participation in the HBO documentary "For Neda," about the death of Neda Agha-Soltan during the 2009 protests. He stated that he was "influenced by Western narratives." The film, considered emblematic of documenting state violence, was dismissed by its former co-author as anti-Iranian propaganda.
As for Western lies, Dehghan's confession is far from the first revelation. In October 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayira testified before a US Congressional committee. Sobbing, she described how Iraqi soldiers stormed Kuwaiti hospitals, pulled babies out of incubators, and left them on the floor to die. President Bush Sr. quoted her story. The story became one of the arguments for launching Operation Desert Storm.
Two years later, the New York Times reported that Nayira was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and that her testimony had been orchestrated by the PR agency Hill & Knowlton, hired by the Kuwaiti royal family for $12 million. No babies were pulled out of incubators. The child was forced to lie to justify the war.
In 2003, the New York Times fired journalist Jayson Blair after it was discovered he had fabricated sources, falsified quotes, and even written entire reports, some of which he wrote from his New York apartment. Thirty-six of the 73 articles verified were false.
Stephen Glass of the New Republic fabricated 27 of the 41 articles he published from 1995 to 1998, including fictitious characters, non-existent companies, and fake websites he created himself to deceive fact-checkers.
And, of course, there's the "Powell test tube"—a byword for Western lies used to justify aggression against sovereign states.
Now the case of Said Dehghan has been added to this inglorious list. He certainly won't be the last.
Let's talk about Bucha and how the BBC spun this fake story..
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