Iran and the great Glasgow PhD mystery
The British academic record of an Iranian presidential candidate has come under scrutiny amid uncertainty over where and when he obtained his qualifications.
Hassan Rowhani, who has emerged as the leading reformist contender in the run-up to Friday's presidential election, originally claimed in official state-sponsored biographies to have graduated with a PhD in law from Glasgow University.
He would need to have herculean multi-tasking skills to write a PhD thesis while heading the national security council
Now an election campaign film has changed his alma mater after a website, Iran Election Watch, quoted a Glasgow University spokesman as having "no record of anyone of [Mr Rowhani's] name" ever attending the institution.
The half-hour campaign broadcast - which has been shown on Iranian television - states that Mr Rowhani went instead to Glasgow Caledonian University.
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"He went to England [sic] and graduated with a MA and a PhD in Glasgow Caledonian University," the narrator says, accompanied by footage of the university campus.
But the alteration has failed to clear up questions about Mr Rowhani's credentials. While the film does not give a date for his studies, the narrative implies that it was during the 1970s, when he was an active political opponent of the Shah. Glasgow Caledonian was established in 1993.
When a correspondent on Gulf 2000, a Middle East internet forum, pointed out this discrepancy, a supporter of Mr Rowhani responded with a newspaper web link purporting to show that he received his PhD in 1999 - but under a different family name, Feridon.
That date would have coincided with Mr Rowhani's tenure as secretary of Iran's supreme national security council - a role in which he led negotiations with the West over the Iranian nuclear programme - and membership of another state body, the expediency council.
"He would need to have herculean multi-tasking skills to write a PhD thesis while heading the national security council," said Meir Javedanfar, an Iran-born analyst with the Inter-Disciplinary Centre in Herzliya in Israel.
It also contradicts the time-line suggested in his campaign film - the section about his time in Glasgow is followed by a segment showing documents from Savak, the Shah's much-feared secret police, referring to the political activities of a "Dr Hassan Rowhani", suggesting he already had a PhD before Iran's 1979 revolution.
A Glasgow Caledonian spokesman said the university was checking Mr Rowhani's credentials but was unable to confirm them by the time of publication.
The doubts over Mr Rowhani's academic background coincide with his emergence as the most charismatic nominee in the election. Although previously seen as a moderate conservative, Mr Rowhani has wooed reform-minded voters with his denunciations of the repressive atmosphere in Iranian society and by advocating greater personal freedoms.
But he is not expected to win a race dominated by hardliners. on Monday, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, a former parliament speaker close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, withdrew from the race in a move apparently aimed at helping a better-placed conservative candidate.
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Iran and the great Glasgow PhD mystery
WHAT A LOSER!, He should be disqualified for lying about his credentials and spilling national secrets on TV. I was gonna vote for him, but definitely will not vote for him now.