Espousing Exponential Arafatisms At Harvard

Amir Taheri writes that when Iran’s former president, Muhammad Khatami, spoke at Harvard he employed not just doublethink, but maybe triple or quadruple-think:

He used a vocabulary carefully designed to hoodwink the Americans without angering his fellow Khomeinists back home. The trick was reinforced by the fact that he often said one thing in Persian, while the interpreter said something else in English for the benefit of the Harvard audience.

Read the rest. Yasser Arafat always had the ability to say one thing to western audiences, and another to the folks back home–but I don’t believe he ever did so simultaneously.