Written in February 2010 and recently leaked on the WikiLeaks website, the diplomatic cable said General Mohammed-Ali Jafari slapped the president during a Supreme National Security Council meeting early in 2010.
While the story appears in a US diplomatic cable, it isn’t known if the United States believes the story to be true.
Discussing the post-election disorders, Ahmadi-nejad reportedly said “the people feel suffocated” and “mused that to defuse the situation it may be necessary to allow more personal and social freedoms, including more freedom of the press.”
Jafari responded angrily, the report said. “You are wrong! It is YOU who created this mess! And now you say give more freedom to the press?!” the cable cited Jafari as yelling before slapping the president’s face. The meeting suddenly ended and allegedly required the efforts of a senior member of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, to get the president and the general to start talking again.
The account of the alleged slapping incident was contained in a report written in the US embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan. It was attributed to a US “intelligence source.” It wasn’t known how US intelligence agencies rated the source. The fact that a report is written down and cabled to Washington does not mean that the United States considers the report to be true. It is simply one of many reports that go into a pot and to be evaluated and compared with other reports from the same source as judgments are made about the source’s reliability.
The Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) denied the report, attributing it to the BBC, a favorite regime target, rather than the US State Department. The Pasdaran said it was another example of bias in BBC reporting.
Pasdar spokesman Commander Ramazan Sharif said, “This kind of ridiculous fabrication of news is aimed at overshadowing the epic of 9 Dey [December 30; the anniversary of nationwide pro-government demonstrations] and the abduction and torture of [Ali-Reza] Asgari [a former deputy defense minister who disappeared in Turkey four years].” The cable, however, was leaked week before.
In 2005, then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice decided there was a dearth of expertise about Iran in the US Foreign Service. As result, observation posts were set up at the US missions to gather information, chiefly by interviewing émigrés and travelers. Known as “Iran watchers,” these staffers are located in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan; Baku; Baghdad, London, Dubai, Frankfurt and Istanbul.