"With all the stories of continued Iranian unrest, human rights abuses, and the complications for western nuclear diplomacy, beware what seems a notable uptick too in very fishy stories of the Chalabi/US-soldiers-will-be-greeted-with-flowers type emerging as well.
For instance: take this piece today in the Bangkok Post by one Maximilian Wechsler, claiming to be an exclusive interview with a former Iran intelligence chief, Mohammad Reza Madhi, who the article says was supposedly Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's right hand man.
Problem is, there is nothing except this article, being circulated by Iranian monarchist exiles (Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah, has recently been traveling in Bangkok, the article notes and sources tell POLITICO) to show that Madhi is what he says he is. The article describes Madhi as "Iran's intelligence chief," while there are no other references that could be found to Madhi having any such position besides those generated by the article itself.
And a bit of digging shows that the writer of Sunday's Bangkok Post "exclusive," Maximilian Wechsler, is himself a former documented Czech-Australian double agent and informant who after he broke ranks with the Australian intelligence services, landed in Thailand and reportedly worked as an agent provocateur, among other gigs:
According to an intelligence officer, who knew Wechsler at that time and saw him at the Australian Embassy, he was also an agent provocateur. He established a connection with the Ananda Marga sect and was responsible for the arrest in Bangkok in 1978 of Ananda Marga members who were sold explosives by Wechsler. The three Ananda Marga—two Australians and one American—were charged with conspiring to blow up the Indian Embassy.
Wechsler, described as a freelancer by the Bangkok Post, has done several articles but has a history of working for various undercover, non-journalistic efforts. See this fascinating history of Wechsler by Victoria University professor Phillip Deery, based on records released by Australia's security services and other interviews....
A dose of skepticism may be in order. It's worth remembering that Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi conned an awful lot of the western press and public to believe some phony Iraqi National Congress "defector" Adnan Ihsan al-Haideri, he made available "exclusively" to gullible journalists in Bangkok before the Iraq invasion, with bogus tales designed to appeal to the western policy narrative. And to remember such moments are fraught with the risk of exploitation by opportunists of various stripes who have an agenda they would seek to impose including on those inside of Iran actually risking their lives, without outside support, interference or taint."
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