The Washington Post has an article downplaying rumors of Iran’s presence in Nicaragua, and quoting folks from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Rep. Connie Mack to yours truly mentioning it, then juxtaposing these with a Nicaraguan who likens the Iranian presence to the poor intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

The authors, Anne-Marie O’Connor and Mary Beth Sheridan, did not try did not speak to me but cite this piece of mine. Strangely, though, they ignore my sourcing, a footnote following the sentence pointing to a September 2007 piece in the Miami Herald. Ignoring sourcing is a strange way for the Washington Post to determine sourcing, and might be an issue which the news editor should ask O’Connor or Sheridan. According to the Miami Herald, the source appears to be Ahmadinejad and unnamed diplomats. O’Connor and Sheridan’s did not ask the Miami Herald and its columnist to elaborate.

When I was a State Department intern in Tajikistan toward the end of their civil war, one of my jobs was to bike around Dushanbe and check on all the projects which the Iranians had announced — only 10 percent of them or so had ever come to fruition. So, if the Iranian presence has diminished in Managua due to Iran’s own budget woes, good news. O’Connor and Sheridan, however, conflate physical size of embassy building with diplomatic presence. Senator Clinton spoke of the Iranians building a huge embassy. I don’t know where she got that. In both the Miami Herald and my essay, size revolved around size of mission/number of diplomatic personnel, something which O’Connor and Sheridan seem not to have asked.

Reporters often twist stories by playing with affiliations. O’Connor and Sheridan both do this. They describe Farideh Farhi as “an expert on Iran’s foreign policy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.” The Iranian press, however, talks more often about Farhi’s tenure at the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry, something Farhi now keeps off her c.v.

It would be interesting for the Washington Post to compare U.S. and Iranian diplomats stationed in Nicaragua and, for that matter, Venezuela and Bolivia. This should only be a matter of asking the foreign ministries in the host countries. Perhaps O’Connor and Sheridan can pursue the story further?