This arises particularly in relation to one of Dreyfuss's principal sources during his recent trip to Iran, Ibrahim Yazdi, Iran's former foreign minister and a so-called "dissident." An article published by the Nation on June 13 entitled "Iran's Ex-Foreign Minister Yazdi: It's A Coup," consisted largely of an interview with this man, who said the election was rigged and illegitimate.
In his book Hostage to Khomeini, however Dreyfuss said that Yazdi was part of a "coterie of experienced, Western-trained intelligence agents."
He claimed that Yazdi's "directions from Washington and London came via the 'professors,' men such as Professor Richard Cottam of the University of Pittsburgh," whom he described as a former "field officer for the CIA attached to the US embassy in Tehran."
Dreyfuss wrote: "Yazdi's wife once described Cottam as 'a very close friend of my husband, the one person who knows more about him than even I do.'"
Elsewhere in the book, Dreyfuss refers to Yazdi as "Mossad-tainted."
The question is: which Dreyfuss are we to believe-the one who exposed Yazdi as an intelligence agent for the US, Britain and Israel, or the one who now quotes him at length as an advocate of "democracy" and "reform"?
Dreyfuss has never publicly repudiated what he wrote in 1981. Was he lying then, or is he lying now? The Nation is obliged to answer. Its readership deserves to know what Dreyfuss is doing at the magazine.
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