The Iran Nuke Test Hoax

Iranian bloggers, we now know, operate in ways quite similar to their counterparts in the free world. To be sure, there are rigid government restrictions on what can be published and where, but the fundamental principle remains: if something fascinates the observer, people around the world may very well want to read about it.

Seyed Ali Pourtabatabaei, a journalist from Qom, made headlines last month when his piece on a hypothetical Iranian nuclear test was republished on a website run by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. To the rest of the world, this appeared to be a deliberate leak of information, perhaps a form of cyber intimidation.

On Tuesday, however, a British journalist caught up with Pourtabatabaei, who claimed that his story was all made up, and was inadvertently redistributed by an acquaintance working on the government site.

He maintains that he fabricated the piece to protest his country's lack of an atomic arsenal.

I wrote that blog out of anger that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. I think sanctions will just continue until the end of days, and they make us so angry. We don't need nuclear weapons otherwise, but if we are going to have these sanctions, we should do a nuclear test to bring them to an end.

Is it really that simple or is there something more sinister at play here?

The whole incident raises the scary prospect that Iran's overlords are now regulating the blogosphere, using proxies on the ground for the purpose of gauging world reaction to their developing nuclear scheme.

His final statement reads like a page out of the Book of Ahmadinejad:

In the media and in formal situations there are rules against saying such [political and religious allegiances] things. But in Iran, in our blogs, we speak about them freely. Many people think this way. Many people in Iran think we already have a nuclear weapon, because of what they hear at Friday prayers. It is a wish: we would be stronger in our region - strong like Israel or like India and Pakistan. If we had a nuclear weapon there would be a balance.

Should we be surprised that the U.K. journalist who snagged the interview is convinced of the story's veracity?

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