Last night our final entry for the evening was a story at ArabNews about some shocking comments about Iran made by Bill Clinton during a conversation with Charlie Rose at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Many readers questioned the veracity of the ArabNews report (by Amir Taheri); I also mentioned in my post that it was a little hard to believe.

Well, it was absolutely true.

LGF operative zombie (with help from “religion of bacon” and Kragar) has located the audio recording of former President Clinton’s remarks; he has a full transcript of the section covered by Amir Taheri’s article here: Clinton Speaking About Iran at Davos.

The audio recording is here: Clinton at Davos. (MP3, 6 MB.)

Rose: (Referring to the Iraqi elections) Do you have confidence that this government, uh, will, as they write the constitution, will not be a mirror-image of the Iranian theocracy?

Clinton: Oh yeah. Yeah — the Shi’ites have been pretty smart about that. And if you look at the Iranian — Iran’s a whole different kettle of fish, but it’s a sad story that really began in the 1950s when the United States deposed Mr. Mossadegh, who was an elected parliamentary democrat, and brought the Shah back in [Rose says “CIA” in the background] and then he was overturned by the Ayatollah Khomeini, driving us into the arms of one Saddam Hussein. Most of the terrible things Saddam Hussein did in the 1980s he did with the full, knowing support of the United States government, because he was in Iran, and Iran was what it was because we got rid of the parliamentary democracy back in the ‘50s; at least, that is my belief.

I know it is not popular for an American ever to say anything like this, but I think it’s true [applause], and I apologized when President Khatami was elected. I publicly acknowledged that the United States had actively overthrown Mossadegh and I apologized for it, and I hope that we could have some rapprochement with Iran. I think basically the Europeans’ initiative to Iran to try to figure out a way to defuse the nuclear crisis is a good one.

I think President Bush has done, so far, the right thing by not taking the military option off the table, but not pushing it too much. I didn’t like the story that looked like the military option had been elevated above a diplomatic option. But Iran is the most perplexing problem … we face, for the following reasons: It is the only country in the world with two governments, and the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Khatami. [It is] the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: two for President; two for the parliament, the Majlis; two for the mayoralities.

In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70% of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.