In case you missed it, new Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has proven his "moderate" credentials to Time magazine [see screen capture below page break]. How so, you might ask? Well, a tweet from (what purports to be) his account yesterday, which reads, "As the sun is about to set here in #Tehran I wish all Jews, especially Iranian Jews, a blessed Rosh Hashanah. pic.twitter.com/tmaf84x7UR"
In a September 5 post, Time's David Stout noted Rouhani stood "[i]n contrast to his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was known for espousing anti-Semitic vitriol." But hold your horses, Time, Iranian officials are denying the account is legitimate, as the International Business Times reported this morning:
After a Twitter account purportedly run by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wished “all Jews, especially Iranian Jews, a blessed Rosh Hashanah," the Jewish New Year, the Twitterverse reacted with incredulity and the news media ate it up, spawning headlines such as CNN’s “Iranian president’s surprising message to Jews,” and Haaretz’s “Are Rohani’s Rosh Hashana blessings a diplomatic signal?”
Not only were the blessings not a diplomatic signal, they weren’t even really blessings from Rouhani himself, according to Iran’s official Fars News Agency.
Mohammad Reza Sadeq, an adviser to Rouhani, said the Iranian president doesn’t even have a Twitter account (although he kept referring to it as “tweeter”), let alone that he was behind the eyebrow-raising tweet purportedly from the leader of a country that wishes for Israel’s destruction.
“President Hassan Rouhani has no tweeter account,” Sadeq said.
