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The NYTimes Walks Back Their Iran Alarmism | IPS Writers in the Blogosphere

On Sunday, the New York Times published an alarming piece by William Broad, James Glanz, and David Sanger claiming that Iran had acquired nearly twenty BM-25 missiles from North Korea that “could for the first time give Iran the capacity to strike at capitals in Western Europe or easily reach Moscow.” The article was based entirely on a Feb. 2010 cable released by WikiLeaks.

The only problem, as IPS’s Gareth Porter pointed out on Tuesday, was that the Times story omitted crucial context that made the picture far murkier. This context included Russian denials that the missiles in question even existed.

Today, the Times issued a new story walking back their original analysis. The story notes that “a review of a dozen other State Department cables made available by WikiLeaks and interviews with American government officials offer a murkier picture of Iran’s missile capabilities.” It’s perhaps notable that David Sanger, whose Times reporting on Iran has tended toward an alarmist view of Iranian weapons capabilities, had a byline on the first story but not the second.

The Times should be commended for showing some skepticism about the BM-25 story. Given the paper’s sorry record in the run-up to the Iraq war, let’s hope that this skepticism proves to be the rule and not the exception.