Amir Taheri

Amir Taheri is an Iranian-born journalist and author based in Europe. His writings focus on the Middle East affairs and topics related to Islamist terrorism. Taheri's public speaking engagements are arranged by Benador Associates, a public relations firm with a predominantly neoconservative clientele.

It has been alleged, credibly, that he is in fact a front for pro-Israel ideologues to publish self-serving material about Iran, under the cover of an Iranian author. Critics have alleged that Taheri's writings, which are written with a native English fluency that Taheri does not exhibit in oral interviews, are in fact ghost written by pro-Israel, neo-conservative handlers.

Education

Amir Taheri's Benador Associaties biography simply indicates that he was "educated in" Tehran, London, and Paris. Suspiciously, details as to which university he attended, or what he studied, are not provided, despite the fact that he is uniformly categorized as an "expert" on Iran by the mainstream English-language press in the United States. It is unknown, therefore, what "expertise" Mr. Taheri has to warrant his global syndication in newspapers and television programs throughout the world, as an "expert" on Iran.

Career

Between 1972 and 1979, Taheri was executive editor-in-chief of Kayhan, Iran's main daily newspaper. He has also worked as editor-in-chief of Jeune Afrique and Middle East editor for the London Sunday Times, and has written for the Daily Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail and other leading British publications.

He has been a columnist for the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat and its sister publication Arab News along with International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and The Washington Post. He was also an editorial writer for the German daily Die Welt and has written for Der Spiegel, Die Zeit and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany, La Repubblica in Italy, L'Express, Politique Internationale and Le Nouvel Observateur in France, and El Mundo in Spain. He is currently a contributor to the German weekly Focus, the National Review and the New York Post.

Taheri is a commentator for CNN and is frequently interviewed by other media including the BBC and the RFI. He has written several TV documentaries dealing with various issues of the Muslim world. He has interviewed many world leaders including Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, King Faisal, Mikhail Gorbachev, President Anwar Sadat, Chou En-lai, Indira Gandhi and Chancellor Helmut Kohl. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for International Political and Economic Studies (IIPES) and member of the Executive Board of the International Press Institute (IPI) from 1984 to 1992.

Writing

Taheri has published nine books some of which have been translated into 20 languages. In 1988 Publishers Weekly in New York chose his study of Islamist terrorism, Holy Terror, as one of The "Best Books of The Year". Another of his books The Cauldron: The Middle East Behind The Headlines (1988) was used as a textbook in various colleges in Britain and Canada. He has also won several journalistic prizes.

Controversies

1988 Nest of Spies book

Shaul Bakhash of George Mason University has accused Amir Taheri of concocting nonexistent substances in his writings, and states that he "repeatedly refers us to books where the information he cites simply does not exist. Often the documents cannot be found in the volumes to which he attributes them.... [He] repeatedly reads things into the documents that are simply not there." Bakhash has stated that Taheri's Nest of Spies is "the sort of book that gives contemporary history a bad name."

2005 Javad Zarif accusations

Dwight Simpson of San Francisco State University and Kaveh Afrasiabi accuse Taheri and his publisher Eleana Benador of fabricating false stories in the New York Post in 2005 where Taheri identified Iran's UN ambassador Javad Zarif as one of the students involved in the 1979 seizure of hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran. Zarif was Simpson's teaching assistant and a graduate student in the Department of International Relations of San Francisco State University at the time.

2006 Iranian sumptuary law

Main article: 2006 Iranian sumptuary law controversy

On May 19, 2006, the National Post of Canada published two pieces, one by Taheri, claiming that the Iranian parliament passed a law that "envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public." Iranian sources say Taheri had taken an Iranian Parliament discussion on a dress code law to have Muslims wear garments that showed you were a Muslim, and reported the event as a law being passed requiring Jews to wear badges as under the Nazis. Current Iranian law does require Jews to identify themselves as such if they sell food, but Iran claims badges for Jews was not actually under discussion nor in the law. Taheri states that his report is correct and that the dress code law has been passed by the Islamic Majlis and will now be submitted to the Council of Guardians. He does not claim badges for Jews are in the law, but does say that special markers for followers of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism are under discussion as a means to implement the law.

The National Post retracted the story several hours after it was posted online. The newspaper blamed Taheri for the falsehood in the article, and published a full apology on May 24. Taheri stands by his reportage.

Selected Bibliography

• The Cauldron: The Middle East Behind The Headlines
• Nest of Spies: America's Journey to Disaster in Iran
• The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution
• Holy Terror: Inside the World of Islamic Terrorism
• Crescent in a Red Sky

External links

• Amir Taheri - Benador Associates
• Amir Taheri, And this is why they did it, The Times (UK), 8 July 2005.
• Amir Taheri, Israel must claim victory over Palestine, The Australian, 9 January 2006
• Amir Taheri, Bonfire of the Pieties, Wall Street Journal, 8 February 2006.
• Amir Taheri, The Real Iraq, Commentary, June 2006.
• Shaikh Riyad Nadwi, This is Britain Mr Taheri, even Benador’s spin will not suffice!, Oxford Cross-Cultural Research Institute (OCCRI) 28 July 2005.
• Amir Taheri Is Israel the Problem?, Commentary February 4, 2007

See also

• Fareed Zakaria
• Salim Mansur
• Eric Margolis
• Gwyn Dyer
• Andrew Coyne
• Rex Murphy
• Martin Stringer
• Joe Schlesinger
• List of Canadian political journalists