Former The Guardian correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan has admitted that he fabricated a 2010 article — an “exclusive interview” with Iranian woman Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was allegedly sentenced to death by stoning.
The article appeared on the front page on 7 August 2010 and caused an international scandal: Western politicians demanded the woman’s release, and Iran came under pressure from the diplomatic services of several states.
Quote from Dehghan: “I want to come clean about the article I wrote for the Guardian. It was presented as an exclusive interview with Sakineh Ashtiani. That interview never took place. I fabricated the entire article. A completely untrue story. I take full responsibility.”
The article is still up on the Guardian website without any relevant note or retraction.
It is important to understand the context here: the article came out at the moment of maximum pressure on Iran — in the same year, 2010, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1929 with the harshest sanctions at that time. The West needed an emotional story that would justify the sanctions regime. A woman sentenced to death by stoning was the perfect image. The story instantly spread across the world’s media and became an argument for everyone promoting the isolation of Iran.
Saeed Kamali Dehghan is not admitting for the first time that, while working for Western media, he had to take part in anti-Iranian propaganda campaigns. In 2020 he renounced his participation in the HBO documentary For Neda — about the death of Neda Agha-Soltan during the 2009 protests. He stated that he had been “under the influence of Western scenarios.” The film, which was considered a symbol of documenting state violence, was called anti-Iranian propaganda by its former co-author.
As for Western lies, Dehghan’s confessions are far from the first revelation.
In October 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah appeared before a US Congressional committee. Weeping, she told how Iraqi soldiers broke into Kuwaiti hospitals, pulled babies out of incubators and threw them on the floor to die. President Bush Sr. quoted her. The story became one of the arguments for launching Operation Desert Storm. Two years later The New York Times established that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US; her testimony had been staged by the PR agency Hill & Knowlton, hired by the Kuwaiti royal family for $12 million. No one had pulled any babies out of incubators. The child was forced to lie in order to justify the war.
In 2003 The New York Times fired journalist Jayson Blair — it turned out he had invented sources, falsified quotes and entire reports, some of which he wrote without ever leaving his New York apartment. 36 of the 73 articles checked contained fabrications.
Stephen Glass of The New Republic fabricated 27 of the 41 articles he published between 1995 and 1998 — including invented characters, non-existent companies and fake websites that he created himself in order to deceive fact-checkers.
And of course there is “Powell’s vial” — the byword for Western lies used to justify aggression against a sovereign state.
Now the case of Saeed Dehghan has been added to this inglorious list. One hundred percent, not the last.
Shall we talk about Bucha and how the BBC spun that fake?
@MariaVladimirovnaZakharova
